Willamette Week, April 26, 2023 - Volume 49, Issue 24 - "The Mushroom Underground"

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WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 49, ISSUE 24

Multnomah County must reprint 560,000 ballots . 5

A stolen

flashlight sells on the street for eight “blues.” 6

The resident of a Hawthorne 7-Eleven started giving neighbors Molotov cocktails 7

If Measure 26-238 passes, many county residents may incur tax liabilities they didn’t know about. 10

Legally ingesting 4 grams of psilocybin will cost $3,500. 12

High Desert Spores is the Papa Johns of mushrooms. 13

You can now access all 73 issues of the very Old Portland publication Clinton St. Quarterly at PSU’s library. 16

The Siren Theater has also ditched downtown. 16

Vietnamese beef noodle soup standard bearer Pho Oregon now has a Beaverton location. 17

The Pacific Northwest’s best beer garden is situated among the remains of a rusty paper mill and a chlor-alkali plant. 19

Black metal music is a natural aesthetic fit for the Pacific Northwest. 20

Mermaids are welcome at Portland Opera. 21

Nothing stokes sibling rivalry like searching for an inheritance check in Silverton. 22

Watch out for falling chandeliers 23

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MICHAEL RAINES

On April 14, a WW reporter informed city officials that Officer Brian Hunzeker of the Portland Police Bureau was moonlighting as a full-time sheriff’s deputy in Clark County, Wash. (“Moonlight Miles,” April 19). Hours later, the city told WW that Hunzeker had resigned. The revelation of Hunzeker’s dual employment was particularly explosive because of his history atop the cops’ union: Mayor Ted Wheeler fired him nearly a year ago for trying to damage the reputation of a police critic, but an arbitrator gave him his job back. The larger question raised by the story, however, was how the city could so lose track of an officer that he could patrol towns in another state without anyone noticing. Here’s what our readers had to say:

FREERADICALX, VIA REDDIT: “Hold up, this is the cop who sued the city last year after being fired for conspiracy to frame Jo Ann Hardesty? Good grief, the absolute gall of this guy.“

@GUN_TOUCHER, VIA TWITTER: “These guys are such welfare collectors.”

TEDSFAUSTIANBARGAIN, VIA REDDIT: “It’s weird how we have this Reno 911 police force right here in Portland and so many people are totally cool with it.”

SASQUATCHISMYHOMIE, VIA REDDIT: “A lot of people are not cool with it. We just haven’t figured out what to do about it yet. Obviously, protesting didn’t work, electing reformers to the City Council also has not worked, consent decrees from the DOJ did not work either. I’m sick of paying these chucklefucks’ salaries, but honestly I’m out of ideas.”

JOHNQPUBLICTHE3RD, VIA WWEEK.COM: “Who’s running the Bureau of Human Resources for the city? Why did they not do a precursory look at what he’s been doing after being fired? Don’t they do any background checks when/if people are hired or brought back? Seems the HR department isn’t following the rules when they fire someone or rehire them.”

ALLREADYREADY, VIA WWEEK.

COM: “Why do you suppose there is a not so small enclave of Portland police living in Southwestern Washington? Is it just that the real estate prices are that much cheaper, or is it because of the nice little community of likeminded good ol’ boys who look out for each other? It reminds me of the New York City P.D. that had a bunch of racist cops fleeing the city for the quiet, mostly white, mostly conservative suburbs of NYC. Birds of a feather flock together.

“Personally, I think that police should have to live in the communities they police. And that doesn’t mean renting an apartment, but actually living there full time. Police should also be required to know their neighborhood’s citizens and what kinds of problems exist there. But, of course, that’s asking for too much.”

AMBITIOUS-IMPRESS-46, VIA

REDDIT: “How many others are doing this?

“Maybe response times in Portland are taking so long because it takes time to change a uniform and drive across the river.”

A MOTOR CITY IN THE MAKING

I’m loving WW’s coverage of Portland. I deeply appreciate and honor independent news sources. I relied on Detroit’s Metro Times more than the Freep or the News

Dr. Know

BY MARTY SMITH @martysmithxxx

Is it against the law for citizens to fix potholes?

There’s a pothole on our street that has been bursting tires and bending wheels for two years. Can I go buy a freaking bucket of cold patch and fix it myself, or will the Stasi show up? —Asphalt Vigilante

I don’t know how often you read the papers (and God help you if my column is your only source of news), but right now the cops are barely keeping up with all the actual murder and mayhem. The chances that some schmo doing unauthorized street maintenance is going to draw a SWAT team seem pretty remote. Which is not to say that you should do it! The city has repeatedly urged citizens not to try filling potholes themselves. Why not? For the same reason they don’t want you putting up your own traffic lights, digging your own sewage culverts, or doing your own repairs on the Morrison Bridge: Don’t take this the wrong way, Vigilante, but, statistically speaking,

when I was at Wayne State. Which leads me to me speaking the same refrain I’ve been saying for a while now: Portland post-COVID-19 is looking more and more like Detroit circa early 2000s. When the city coffers ran dry because of greed. However, it seems here coffers have cash, just no one is allocating it properly. Mismanagement is mismanagement.

Mismanagement starved Detroit emergency services and first responders of money for maintenance and staffing (PPB needs help. Portland’s fire department needs help). The street lights burned out and the city didn’t replace them (park lights, anyone?). Water and sewage services lapsed and plenty of neighborhoods didn’t have running water. And to bring around the point: Night after night, lot after lot caught fire, either by arson or accident as squatters tried to stay warm, cook food (or drugs), until every neighborhood was a mishmash of burned-out hulks, houses in various stages of disrepair, and one or two maintained structures.

I’m not going to give up on Portland. It’s the first place I truly feel accepted for me, what I can offer my community, but City Hall needs a wake-up, and the “I didn’t vote because it doesn’t matter” crowd needs to be called to task and made to look at what nihilism and voting apathy does. I think WW’s staff is doing a great job of fighting that fight. Keep it up.

Kara Nagle

Southeast Portland

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR must include the author's street address and phone number for verification. Letters must be 250 or fewer words.

Submit to: PO Box 10770, Portland OR, 97296

Email: mzusman@wweek.com

you’re probably an idiot.

Look at it from the city’s point of view: They don’t know you. Is it really safe for them to assume you can fill a pothole without getting yourself run over, or leaving your tools in the middle of the roadway, or mistakenly filling the hole with napalm and live eels? And then, when the whole thing blows up in your face, are you going to say, “Ah, well, I’ve learned a valuable lesson?” No, you’re going to sue the city for a billion dollars and name the eels as co-defendants.

That said, you’re not exactly the first person to consider going rogue on potholes. Just last year, Rod Stewart shocked the world with the news that he was still alive, and proved it with a video of himself (and a work crew) repairing several potholes in a public road near his estate. In Oakland, a group calling themselves “Pothole Vigilantes” grabbed headlines last summer for similar high jinks.

Finally, there’s Portland Anarchist Road Care, a group started in 2017 “not only to fix the potholes, but to take power back from the state into the hands of the people.” By their own count, they patched five potholes before dropping out of sight in, um, 2017. I know, it’s hard to imagine Portland anarchists becoming disenchanted with the daily grind of honest labor, but there it is.

Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.

MURMURS

Bureau did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the discrepancy.

COUNTY MEASURES SHOW CASH

DISPARITIES: Multnomah County campaign contribution limits that went into effect in 2021 are having a marked impact on the May 16 county commissioner race between Portland School Board member Julia Brim-Edwards and former nonprofit leader Ana del Rocío. (A third candidate, Albert Kaufman, isn’t raising money.) Prior to limits, you might have expected Brim-Edwards, who retired from a senior position at Nike in 2022, to vastly outraise del Rocío, a grassroots organizer. But with the $568-per-donor limit, Brim-Edwards has raised just $105,000. That’s a little more than twice del Rocío’s $50,000 total but far less than it would have been before limits. The limits apply only to candidate races, not ballot measures—and fundraising for Measure 26-238, which would impose a new capital gains tax to pay for eviction relief lawyers, shows the disparities that are possible without limits. Tenants Organizing Against Displacement, the yes campaign, has raised just under $26,000, while Building Our Future Together, the campaign to defeat the measure, has raised $591,000, including a $250,000 check from the National Association of Realtors. Meanwhile, voters will have to wait a few more days for their ballots to arrive: An error by Multnomah County Elections has required the reprinting of 560,000 ballots, at a cost of $300,000.

NEW REPORT SHOWS DROP IN VIOLENT CRIME: Violent crime dropped 10% last year in Portland, according to a new analysis by the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission. Property crime saw a smaller drop of 2%, mirroring state and regional trends. The decline comes after a nearly 12% rise in violent crime between 2020 and 2021 in Oregon’s most populous cities, “which indicates that the concerning increase in violent crime during the COVID-19 pandemic may be reversing,” the report notes. The analysis released by the CJC on April 17 was based on the FBI’s Preliminary Uniform Crime Report for 2022, which tracks crime data supplied by more than 12,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, including the Portland Police Bureau. The new numbers are welcome news, but may do little to dispel Portlanders’ concerns about public safety. The number of shootings remained flat and car theft rose by more than 20% in 2022, the Police Bureau reports. And the preliminary FBI murder numbers don’t align with the bureau’s own homicide reports. The FBI says murders dropped from 86 to 85. But PPB’s data shows homicides increased from 88 to 97. The Police

SHELTER REOPENING DELAYED BY MONTHS: Last spring, Multnomah County shut down a 120-bed homeless shelter in Southeast Portland for repairs. WW has learned its reopening will be delayed by months due to additional flaws in the electrical system discovered by the county during repairs. The additional work at the Willamette Center will cost an extra $1 million—and the shelter won’t open un til the fall. The Willamette Center is one of two county shelters currently closed for renovations. The other is the Arbor Lodge shelter in North Portland, which is expected to reopen in 2024. The closure of the two shelters brings the county’s shelter bed count, including tiny homes and motel rooms, to 1,718. “Additional needs were uncovered as the work began, which is not uncom mon in construction,” says Denis Theri ault, spokesman for the Joint Office of Homeless Services, “and we’re working through that so we can get the building back to providing a safe place to sleep for hundreds of people a year.”

BRIDGE AND TOLLS MOVE FRONT

AND CENTER: Although the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Transportation is grappling with whether and how to fund two megaprojects on Interstate 5 in Portland (the proposed $1.45 billion expansion of the freeway at the Rose Quarter and the $6.5 billion replacement of the Interstate Bridge), the committee has held limited discussion of those projects or the tolls the Oregon Department of Transportation plans to use to pay for them. Eight members of the committee, including Rep. Khanh Pham and Sen. Lew Frederick (both D-Portland), took the unusual step of requesting a public hearing on tolling way back on March 9. That hearing still hasn’t happened, but the committee will finally take public testimony on House Bill 2098, which relates to the bridge and tolling, on April 27 at 5 pm. Clackamas County residents and their lawmakers are all but revolting against proposed tolls, which they fear would be too expensive and would divert traffic from Interstate 205 to local streets. At an April 24 town hall in Lake Oswego, Senate President Rob Wagner, who last week named himself to the Transportation Committee, told the crowd, “ODOT has not done a very good job answering [tolling] questions for our community and I think this conversation is not done.”

PHIL KNIGHT GIVES $400 MILLION

TO ALBINA: Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, pledged $400 million April 24 to invest in North Portland’s Albina neighborhood through a new nonprofit called the 1803 Fund. The fund will be run by Rukaiyah Adams, former chief investment officer at the Meyer Memorial Trust and onetime chair of the Oregon Investment Council. The fund’s first project is called Rebuild Albina. It will invest in “education, place and culture and belonging in the Albina community, with benefits that will ripple across Portland.” That neighborhood, the center of Portland’s Black community, was torn apart over decades by the construction of Interstate 5 and rising home prices. It’s also home to Moda Center, the arena for the Portland Trail Blazers, which Knight has sought to purchase from the estate of Paul Allen. At a press conference Monday on the Nike campus, Knight paraphrased John F. Kennedy’s famous quote: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

MICK HANGLAND-SKILL

ANA DEL ROCÍO

BY SOPHIE PEEL speel@wweek.com

Two weeks ago, WW reported that a half-million-dollar grant awarded to a nonprofit co-led by the CEO of embattled cannabis dispensary chain La Mota had been abruptly canceled. Oregon Labor Commissioner Christina Stephenson revoked the grant after WW reported on the chain’s millions of dollars in tax liens and lawsuits.

Now WW has learned the grant’s intended purpose—to create a registered apprenticeship program in the cannabis industry—was never legally possible.

THE GRANT: As WW previously reported, a council overseen by the Oregon Bureau of Labor & Industries awarded $554,000 last August to the nonprofit ENDVR. The grant was to fund the creation of a state-registered apprenticeship program for lab workers in the cannabis industry. Registered apprenticeships operate as part of a U.S. Department of Labor program that works to create national standards and high-quality training for trades like construction and electrical work.

ENDVR said its apprenticeship program would train “botanical extractionists”—work-

The Budtender’s Apprentice Outdoor Supplies

ers who extract secondary products from cannabis, such as oils and distillates, in labs.

Then-Labo r Commissioner Val Hoyle vouched for the value of such apprenticeships.

“We’re looking at a time when [cannabis] will be legal federally. Without federal legalization, this is a billion-dollar industry in Oregon,” Hoyle said July 27. “And when this can be exported across state lines, it’s going to be larger. So professionalizing the workforce is important.”

THE PROBLEM: BOLI officials now tell WW the grant was made in error because registered apprenticeship programs are subject to federal government standards, and cannabis is still categorized as a Schedule I controlled substance. That means ENDVR could never have registered its program as an apprenticeship with the state.

“The expenditure of appropriated funds on the registration of an apprenticeship in the marijuana industry is not an allowable use of the Office of Apprenticeship funding because marijuana remains illegal under federal law,” says Labor Department spokeswoman Monica Vereen.

Deputy labor commissioner Jessica Gi-

annettino Villatoro corroborated that in an email: “There isn’t currently a pathway for a [cannabis] registered apprenticeship program, due to the status of the industry federally.”

That means a state agency granted half a million dollars to a program that could not have legally registered with the state as an apprenticeship.

Current BOLI Commissioner Christina Stephenson declined to comment on the prior administration’s decision to grant ENDVR $554,000 for an unregisterable apprenticeship.

Future Ready Oregon funds to.”

Hoyle did not say whether she knew when her administration approved the grant that the program could not be registered. But in an interview earlier this month, Hoyle insisted she had not received guidance from the feds that there was anything illegitimate about a cannabis-related apprenticeship program.

“If I had guidance from the Department of Labor saying, ‘We think this is illegal,’ or ‘You’re not allowed to do it,’ that would have been brought to the [council] that made the decision,” Hoyle said. “I’m certain that would have affected the way they voted.”

WHY IT MATTERS: The fact that BOLI now concedes it awarded half a million dollars for an apprenticeship program that couldn’t legally launch only intensifies questions about a process that’s already drawn criticism.

The Oregon State Apprenticeship and Training Council awarded the grant to ENDVR despite council members initially expressing skepticism about the nonprofit’s high personnel costs ($97,000 for an executive director) and lack of industry support.

After Hoyle suggested ENDVR take a month to submit a more complete proposal, the council unanimously approved the grant in August.

Questions mounted after REI announced plans last week to shut down its flagship Portland store at year’s end. The outdoor gear company said negotiations with its landlord had broken down after it sought to make “significant investment” in the space on Northwest Johnson Street in the Pearl District.

In an email to customers, it cited increased crime. But an employee later told Oregon Business magazine that the store had been cutting hours and was in the midst of a union drive. Meanwhile, John Hallstrom, the managing member for the property owner, Brolin Co. LLC, said it was negotiating a 10-year lease, but “external factors that we are unable to control caused REI to decide to leave at the end of the current lease term.”

Hoyle acknowledges “the grant was miscategorized” as an apprenticeship, but says she would fund such a program again: “Based on the information provided in their application and what we were aware of at the time, it was the exact type of program we wanted to put

It’s difficult to say which of these reasons was the primary driver of the announcement—or if REI will really leave. But it is certainly true that REI and other businesses in central Portland have been struggling with shoplifting in recent years. WW reviewed several recent prosecutions to understand why outdoor retailers, like REI, are frequent targets, and why theft has proven so difficult to stop.

Here’s three things we learned:

CAMPING EQUIPMENT IS IN HIGH DEMAND

It might seem too obvious to mention, but one reason camping supply stores struggle with shoplifting is that they carry items of immediate utility to people sleeping outdoors.

That means serial shoplifters have a ready customer base. When police finally caught up with one such repeat offender, a man named Patrick Leever, on April Fools’ Day in the parking lot of a Northeast Portland Marshalls, he admitted he often traded lifted goods for drugs and cash on MAX station platforms.

Those goods: more than $2,000 in REI gear. A “senior asset protection officer” for the company gave police that figure in February, after an encounter in which Leever allegedly shoved a company security guard into a coat rack on his way out the door with a coat. The criminal case against him was later dismissed.

SHOPLIFTERS SELL STOLEN REI GOODS UNDER INTERSTATE 405

A source in the mayor’s office tells WW there’s a resale market for REI goods under I-405 where it passes overhead near the store. A man living near the highway, who declined to give his name,

ENDVR was co-founded in late 2021 by Rosa Cazares, the 34-year-old CEO and co-owner of the second largest dispensary chain in the state, La Mota. Cazares and her longtime partner and co-owner of La Mota, Aaron Mitchell, collectively contributed $26,000 to Hoyle by the time ENDVR was awarded the grant. (Hoyle returned all contributions to her BOLI reelection campaign, including a $20,000 donation from Mitchell, before running for Congress.)

Hoyle, now a U.S. representative, says the contributions made by the couple had no influence on her support of the ENDVR grant. She has pledged to reject any further contributions from Mitchell or Cazares.

confirmed that account. He told WW that camping gear, particularly large tents, were a hot commodity on the streets. He recently stole a flashlight from REI, which he sold for eight “blues”—fentanyl pills. The pills are as good as cash, he added.

A RUMOR PERSISTS THAT RETAIL EMPLOYEES CAN’T TOUCH SHOPLIFTERS

One clue to why shoplifters operate with such confidence is included in a recent probable cause affidavit for a man named Colby Nutter.

After Nutter walked out with around $300 in camping equipment from Next Adventure, an outdoor gear store in Portland’s Central Eastside, he was surprised to see an employee following him.

The two got in a scuffle, and the employee returned to the store—with the goods. Nutter didn’t feel it was fair for the employee to follow him. He returned to the store, threw a punch, and said he’d be back with a gun.

Police were waiting for him when he returned. According to an affidavit later filed by prosecutors, he told them that “he did not feel employees were allowed to use reasonable physical force to get stolen items back.”

The assumption, though false, is not unreasonable. Loss Prevention Magazine found in a 2017 survey of retailers that nearly half had a “no physical touch” policy when confronting thieves. Based on its handling of Leever, REI appears to be one of them. Next Adventure, clearly, was not.

After failing to show up in court after being booked on theft charges, Nutter is now in jail. LUCAS MANFIELD.

The state awarded a half-million dollars to a nonprofit that promised the impossible.

REI’s complaints about shoplifting are echoed in court documents.

CONGRESSWOMAN VAL HOYLE

COURTESY VAL HOYLE

Detroit Style

Neighbors complained for months about a stretch of Hawthorne where a dog attacked a jogger.

ADDRESSES:

4516 and 4511 SE Hawthorne Blvd.

YEARS BUILT: 1976, 1968

SQUARE FOOTAGE: 2,544, 1,480

MARKET VALUE: $1.1 million, $3.1 million

OWNER: Blue Merced R 1414 LLC, Hawthorne 45 LLC

HOW LONG IT’S BEEN EMPTY: 2 years and a few months

WHY IT’S EMPTY:

Developers, developers, developers

Among the biggest stories in Portland in the past week was that of Cheryl Wakerhauser, a pastry chef who was jogging past a vacant parking lot on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard on April 17 when a pit bull sprang through a hole cut in a chain-link fence and mauled her. The attack sent Wakerhauser, the former proprietor of Pix Pâtisserie, to the ER. She told her story on Instagram, and coverage by The Oregonian amplified civic frustration with urban blight and crime.

Neighbors say they’ve complained to the city, elected officials, and the building’s owners about the property, called Hawthorne Center, for months. Its tenants were replaced by squatters earlier this year, despite efforts by the developer to secure what was once two stories of medical offices.

First, a homeless encampment sprouted up behind the building during the pandemic, and a man known for terrorizing passersby with rocks moved in, neighbors say.

Then, after the building ’s tenants moved out earlier this year, vandals coated the building with graffiti. Jason Hill was walking by one night when he saw a group of youth in action, armed with aerosol cans. One turned out to be a can of bear spray. Hill was sprayed in the face and forced to stumble home in the dark after being nearly blinded, he tells WW

For years, the office complex was filled with dentists, chiropractors and therapists. Killian Pacific, a Portland real estate developer, purchased the building in 2016 for $3.9 million. It has done little with it since, even as tents surrounded the doctors’ offices.

The company has been mum about its plans for the building. As early as last year, a spokesperson said it had no definitive plans to demolish it, according to emails shared with WW by Jamie Smith, a member of the Sunnyside

Neighborhood Association at the time.

Something changed earlier this year, however. The doctors’ offices all picked up and moved, and Killian Pacific hired security to patrol the property and put up a fence.

It did little to deter squatters and vandals.

“It’s a joke. I’ve watched teenagers jump [the fence] every week,” says neighbor Theresa Beck van Heemstra, who adds that her efforts to force action by city officials now amount to a parttime job.

Michael Parker, who recently pitched a tent

on a patch of dirt between the sidewalk and the parking lot, tells WW he’s seen a man coming and going from the building, “looking like a coal miner.” Inside, the building is filled with feces and black mold, Parker says.

When WW visited the property last week, large holes had been cut in the fence in two places. Neighbors have called Portland Fire & Rescue after spotting fires inside the perimeter, and Beck van Heemstra worries the building might burn down like several other vacant properties WW has profiled in recent months.

To make matters worse, that stretch of Hawthorne is blighted on both sides of the street. There are few eyes on Hawthorne Center because the 7-Eleven across the street closed early in the pandemic. It’s unclear why—a local franchisee says it’s against the rules to talk to the media, and corporate never responded to a request for a comment. The building has been vacant since, meaning joggers like Wakerhauser are running a gauntlet of chained-up properties in the 4500 block.

“It’s frustrating living in Little Detroit,” a neighbor bemoaned on Nextdoor.

Winn Wright moved into the ground floor of an apartment building across the street in 2020, and says conditions on the block have deteriorated in recent years as drug dealers have begun operating on the curbs and sidewalks. He’s not sure why the 7-Eleven closed abruptly, but he’s not surprised. “I don’t know how a business could thrive there, given how bad it was getting,” he says.

In 2021, 7-Eleven sold the convenience store to California developers, which surrounded it with a chain-link fence last year. The fence has been repeatedly scaled, and sometimes toppled, by vandals.

A man suffering from mental illness moved in to a tent under its eaves last year and began leaving crudely made Molotov cocktails on nearby porches and yelling through the night, Wright says.

Blue Merced R 1414 purchased the property for $710,000 in 2021. It shares a name and address with a California LLC controlled by Blake Megdal, a Los Angeles real estate scion who has bought up convenience stores up and down the West Coast.

Recently, the former convenience store has shown signs of life. Permit applications have been filed with the city to upgrade its HVAC system and close off one of its driveways. Nancy Chapin, the administrator at the local business association, says an upscale massage studio soon plans to move in.

Meanwhile, Killian Pacific is trying to solve its squatting problem for good. It told neighbors it plans to send in cleanup crews in late April to board up the building as it figures out how to demolish it. “Due to the level of damage from trespassers, there is cleaning and fortification work that needs to be done first,” a spokesperson tells WW LUCAS MANFIELD.

Every week, WW examines one mysteriously vacant property in the city of Portland, explains why it’s empty, and considers what might arrive there next. Send addresses to newstips@ wweek.com.

CHASING GHOSTS

MICHAEL RAINES MICHAEL RAINES

BLIGHT: Squatters have moved into a vacant Southeast Portland office complex.

EMPTY STOREFRONTS: A boarded-up 7-Eleven across the street has stood empty for years.

LIVE AT MUSIC MILLENNIUM!

CALENDAR OF EVENTS

CROWN THE EMPIRE

FRIDAY

APRIL 28TH AT 3PM

‘DOGMA’ IS A DECISIVELY HEAVY, DIVERSE ALBUM FUELED BY ANGST, EXISTENTIAL IDENTITY, ISOLATION AND DETERMINATION.

JENNY CONLEE

SATURDAY

APRIL 29TH AT 3PM

THE NEW ALBUM ‘TIDES: PIECES FOR ACCORIDON AND PIANO’ IS A HUMBLE YET DEEPLY EMOTIONAL INSTRUMENTAL JOURNEY.

THE�HOLD�STEADY THE LEMON TWIGS

SUNDAY

APRIL 30TH AT 3PM

20 YEARS STRONG, THE BAND RECENTLY RELEASED THEIR 9TH ALBUM ‘THE PRICE OF PROGRESS.’ THEY PLAY THEIR FIRST LIVE SHOWS IN PORTLAND SINCE 2014.

MONDAY MAY 1ST AT 7:30PM

ON ‘EVERYTHING HARMONY’ THE BROTHERS HAVE REALIZED A VISION AND UNIFIED SOUND THAT BLENDS THEIR DISTINCT PERSONALITIES WITH ECLECTIC INFLUENCES.

SENATE BILL 611

A bill to cap allowable annual rent increases proves contentious.

A bill introduced in the Oregon Legislature by progressive Democrats seeks to make it more difficult for landlords to price out their tenants. It would cap the allowable annual rent increase across the state and require a larger payout to renters evicted without cause. It’s proving to be one of the more contentious bills of the legislative session. It’s the latest battleground between tenants’ rights groups, which have been ascendant in Salem for several years, and landlords, who for decades blocked anything smelling of rent control. Advocates for rent-control measures argue that capping rent increases would help prevent low-income renters from becoming homeless. Landlords argue that rent control disincentivizes building more housing and slows meeting the state’s housing goals.

CHIEF SPONSORS: Sens. Wlnsvey Campos (D-Aloha) and Sara Gelser Blouin (D-Corvallis) and Reps. Andrea Valderrama (D-Portland), Courtney Neron (D-Wilsonville) and Mark Gamba (D-Milwaukie)

WHAT IT WOULD DO: SB 611 would require landlords to pay three months’ rent to tenants they evict without cause, rather than the one month’s rent now required.

It would also cap the allowable annual rent increase at 10%, or 5% plus the previous year’s consumer price index, whichever is less. The current statewide cap is 7% plus CPI. This year, that equates to an allowable rent increase of 14.6%. (When lawmakers passed a statewide cap in 2019, they grandfathered in previous Portland rules, which require landlords to pay moving costs if they raise rents more than 10%.)

The bill as initially drafted sought to cap the allowable rent hike at 8%, or 3% plus CPI, whichever was less. But facing hesitancy from legislators on both sides of the aisle, Sen. Kayse Jama (D-Portland), who chairs the Senate Committee on Housing and Development in which the bill now sits, amended SB 611 last week to raise the cap slightly.

PROBLEM IT SEEKS TO SOLVE: Displacement of tenants through annual rent increases. Multnomah County estimates 3,057 people sleep on Portland-area streets on any given night. Advocates argue that annual rent spikes are a primary factor in an increasing number of Portlanders falling into homelessness.

WHO SUPPORTS IT: Tenants’ rights advocates and renters. Groups in support include the Coalition of Communities of Color, the Community Alliance of Tenants, and the Oregon Housing Alliance.

CAT executive director Kim McCarty wrote in legislative testimony that renters are in “shock and panic” seeing their rents increase this year. “Every day, tenants call our hotline to tell us that they are at risk of homelessness because they received an unreasonable rent increase notice,” McCarty wrote.

WHO OPPOSES IT: Landlords and landlord groups, including Multifamily NW, which aired its objections in a March 24 letter to the Housing and Development Committee.

“Rent control is at best a thin Band-Aid that will not ultimately benefit Oregonians,” wrote the landlord group. “Multifamily NW is eager to move beyond this well intended but highly impractical proposal.”

Landlord groups argue that Portland’s strong renter protections, and increasingly the state’s similar rules, deter developers from building affordable housing—what most would agree is the core issue at the heart of the state’s homelessness crisis.

The bill now sits in the Senate Committee on Rules. SOPHIE PEEL.

MAY 2023 ENDORSEMENTS

Yes, there’s an election next month— and it matters. Here’s what to do.

BY WW STAFF 503-550-2159

MULTNOMAH COUNTY COMMISSIONER

Democracy is what happens while you’re making other plans.

In this off-cycle May 16 election, no marquee contests jump off the ballot. It’s a slate of school board seats (most of them uncontested), a county commissioner’s job that came open midterm, and a couple of tax measures. Maybe this is an election you can ignore?

Not a chance. Little decisions have a way of growing in significance. Public schools in Portland are losing more students than an episode of Yellowjackets. Multnomah County is central to reducing the number of people sleeping outside. And tax measures are always worth

what may be the largest pool of discretionary funding controlled by a local jurisdiction in the state. Whoever is elected to this position could play a key role in helping Vega Pederson make sure the Joint Office spends its money effectively, something that it hasn’t always done. That will require making difficult decisions and holding staff and contractors more accountable.

In our endorsement interview, we asked the three candidates for this race, Julia Brim-Edwards, Ana del Rocío and Albert Kaufman, to grade the Joint Office’s performance.

Kaufman, 61, who owns and operates a small marketing company, awarded the Joint Office an A+; the other two candidates said they’d give it a D. (That answer alone disqualifies Kaufman, who is a nice guy but acknowledges the race is between the other two candidates.)

The two women agree on the letter grade—but that’s where the similarities end between Brim-Edwards, 61, and del Rocío, 36. District 3 voters have a choice between two candidates from different generations who present sharply different backgrounds, styles and levels of experience.

paying attention to.

This election, like all of them, is a chance to adjust the direction of Portland. So WW invited all candidates in contested races, as well as supporters and foes of the ballot measures, to our offices for joint interviews. (The spirited discussions can be viewed in full at wweek.com.)

Unlike endorsements issued by many labor unions, advocacy groups and business guilds, newspaper endorsements are not seals of approval or pledges of solidarity. They are advice to voters—to you—on how to think about tough decisions.

We hope this advice proves stimulating and useful, whether you agree with us or not. Sweat the small stuff—and vote.

making, and also helped kill a bloated Metro transportation measure in 2020.

In short, Brim-Edwards gets things done. Along the way, she’s ruffled feathers and often made enemies. “Calculating” is a word people often use to describe her. When she makes up her mind, she plays hardball. Her PPS board colleagues illustrate the deeply divided views on her: three of them have endorsed her; the other three have endorsed del Rocío.

There’s a lot to admire about del Rocío. The first member of her family born in the U.S., she won an academic scholarship to the University of Southern California, where she enrolled at 16. She’s been active in the community, serving on Multnomah County budget advisory and charter review commissions and numerous other volunteer panels, and ran the nonprofit Oregon Futures Lab, which trains political candidates of color. She worked as an aide to Vega Pederson in the Legislature and at the county.

3 Julia Brim-Edwards

District

Eastside voters get a choice to select new leadership because the commissioner who previously represented this district, Jessica Vega Pederson, won election as Multnomah County chair last November. (Former state Sen. Diane Rosenbaum [D-Portland] now serves as Veda Pederson’s designated replacement but is not seeking the office.)

The district up for grabs runs between 33rd and 148th avenues south of Interstate 84 to the Portland city limits.

The Multnomah County Board of Commissioners traditionally gets less attention than the Portland City Council but arguably plays a greater role in confronting the most difficult problem the city faces: the unsheltered homelessness that has remade the Rose City into a shantytown.

The Joint Office of Homeless Services, despite being nominally a city-county partnership, is located in county offices and reports to the county chair. This year, it has a budget of $255 million. That office didn’t even exist a decade ago. Now, it presides over

Both women have won school board elections. Brim-Edwards is currently serving her third term on the Portland Public Schools board. Del Rocío resigned from the David Douglas School Board less than 18 months into her first term. The single mother of two said her family situation changed, making her board service untenable.

Brim-Edwards began working in politics more than 30 years ago on the staff of U.S. Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.). Most recently, she worked as a senior director at Nike for 17 years, retiring from that position in 2022. Throughout her time on the PPS board and at Nike, Brim-Edwards has play a role in large, often difficult decisions and policy battles.

During Brim-Edwards’ first term on the board from 2001 to 2005, she led the wrenching process of closing chronically under-enrolled schools. Before she returned to the board in 2017, she and other parents successfully battled the district to lengthen the school year. Returning as a board member, she helped generate support to renovate the city’s high schools. Last year, she led the fight to get lawmakers to pony up $120 million to relocate Harriet Tubman Middle School.

As Nike’s lead political operative in Oregon, she built an unlikely coalition with public employee unions to pass the $1 billion annual Student Success Act in 2019, a win nearly 30 years in the

As a single mother, renter and transit rider, del Rocío brings a different perspective from that of Brim-Edwards, the well-heeled daughter of a wealthy health care entrepreneur. Del Rocío has scored a host of endorsements from groups representing people of color, recent immigrants and social justice causes. But it is difficult to pinpoint her signature accomplishment, in part because she’s rapidly jumped from one post to another.

To distill the choice here, it’s Brim-Edwards’ experience versus del Rocío’s potential.

For the pressing issues the county faces—effectively spending homeless dollars, working to alleviate mental illness and addiction, and providing other vital human services—voters would best be served by someone with a history of asking tough questions and making difficult choices.

A small but telling example: We asked all the candidates where they stood on Measure 26-238, a capital gains tax to support eviction representation that is also on the ballot. Brim-Edwards gave a simple answer (no, the same as Vega Pederson and most other local elected officials) and a succinct explanation. Del Rocío claimed she hadn’t decided and followed up with a two-page memo elaborating on her thinking—but still making no decision.

At this difficult juncture in Multnomah County history, voters need a budget hawk who will help Vega Pederson devise and execute a plan, even if that means making some people angry.

What Brim-Edwards would bring to a picnic: Friends.

APRIL 26, 2023 wweek.com

MICK HANGLAND-SKILL

MAY 2023 ENDORSEMENTS

MEASURE 26-238

Imposes capital gains tax to fund eviction relief services and legal representation

NOIn a city where housing is scarce and tents are common, keeping renters in their apartments is crucial to preventing an ugly situation from getting even worse. The group behind this measure, the Portland chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, began working on eviction relief more than a year ago. Fifteen cities, including New York, Seattle and San Francisco, enacted some form of legal representation for tenants facing eviction since 2017. Three states did, as well.

The reason: The playing field in eviction court is wildly uneven. Proponents of this measure say fewer than 10% of Oregonians facing eviction have legal counsel, while landlords always do. The results are predictably one-sided.

PORTLAND PUBLIC SCHOOLS BOARD

Zone 3

Derrick Peterson

Four of the seven seats on the Portland Public Schools board appear on the May ballot, but only one race is contested. Incumbent board members Andrew Scott and Michelle DePass drew no opposition; nor did Eddie Wang, a former Benson Polytechnic High teacher seeking an open seat.

On one level, it’s a relief to see Portland dodge the national wave of hard-right school board hijackings that effectively shutter libraries and shove kids back into the closet. But it’s also a missed opportunity for hard discussions about whom a shrinking school district serves. WW reported last month that Portland kindergartens have seen enrollment drop by 17.3% in two years—a steeper rate than the rest of the country and one that reflects a loss of trust among parents after a farcical year of distance learning and increasing safety concerns.

At least we got a conversation in Zone 3. The zone, which covers Portland’s westside from Lincoln High School in the Goose Hollow neighborhood up to Sylvan K-8 in West Slope, has been represented for two terms by Amy Kohnstamm, whose performance this newspaper has criticized (especially her role in failing to sufficiently vet a superintendent hire). She’s stepping down, and Derrick Peterson faces Patte Sullivan for the job.

You might remember Peterson, 60: Last year, he ran for Multnomah County sheriff, losing narrowly to Nicole Morrisey O’Donnell. He retired last year as chief corrections deputy after 35 years at the sheriff’s office, and now he teaches diversity and equity courses at three local colleges. We had reservations about Peterson’s sheriff bid, mostly centered on a dispute around his law enforcement credentials and his fondness for platitudes.

The licensing question is no longer relevant. The weakness for jargon remains, but we were impressed by some of his ideas, including a novel solution to the bitter debate about returning police officers to school halls. Peterson suggests modeling a school program after Portland Street Response, which replaces police officers with medical professionals as the first responders to people in mental crisis on the city’s sidewalks. We want more details but think the spirit of his idea is promising. Ideally, Peterson would use what he learned working behind bars to stop kids from sliding down the school-to-prison pipeline.

We’ll find out, since he faces no serious competition. Sullivan, 80, a retired teacher, has laudable motives for getting into the race—including wanting to protect LGBTQ+ kids from right-wing harassment—but lacks the requisite knowledge of the district’s operations. Peterson is our choice.

“I’m

The solution Eviction Representation for All proposes is a 0.75% tax on capital gains, which the group says would raise $12 million to $15 million a year. (It’s worth noting that the last two grassroots tax measures, the 2018 Portland Clean Energy Fund and 2020’s Preschool for All initiative, generated vastly more than their architects projected.) The measure would tax the profits on the sale of assets such as stocks, bonds, property, businesses and other investments held for more than a year.

At the most basic level, however, the measure is deeply flawed. The campaign acknowledges two unforced errors. First, it failed to explicitly exempt profits from the sale of primary residences, as federal tax law does. That means a retired senior living on a modest income who sells his or her home could have to pay the tax on decades of appreciated value. Second, the tax is retroactive to Jan. 1, 2023. Normally, new taxes start after a measure passes. The upshot: If 26-238 passes, many county residents may incur tax liabilities this year they didn’t know about.

There’s more: The city of Portland’s Revenue Division, which would collect the tax for the county, says startup costs would be about $19 million and that administrative costs would consume about half the tax annually after that. (By contrast, the similarly sized Portland Children’s Levy, which is also on the ballot, limits

MEASURE 26-240

Five-year renewal of Portland Children’s Levy

YES

When City Commissioner Dan Saltzman first pitched the Portland Children’s Levy in 2002, we weren’t hot on the idea. We said it lacked oversight and asked: Why should the city pay for services that are typically the county’s bailiwick?

We’ve since warmed to the concept, in part because the reach into taxpayers’ pockets now seems modest compared to what’s been proposed in the next two decades, and partly because its administrators have proved capable stewards of the public trust. Indeed, when the Children’s Levy comes up for renewal every five years, we greet it with greater fondness, like a golden oldie.

Since first passing it in 2002, voters have renewed the property tax levy three times. In the last go-around, in 2018, it passed with 83% of the vote.

The program, in its latest iteration, funded 91 programs in five service areas: child hunger, abuse prevention, child care, after-school mentoring, and foster care. Recipients ranged from the Oregon Food Bank, which used the money to open more food pantries in schools, to Mt. Hood Community College, which expanded its Head Start programs.

admin costs to 5%.) The city says the high expense stems from the unique nature of the proposal.

No other county in America imposes a capital gains tax. That’s a clue that charging one probably isn’t good policy, if for no other reason than it gives people an incentive to live in other places. (Multnomah County’s population has already fallen two years in a row, experiencing one of the largest declines by percentage among large American counties.) And unlike the two other recent income taxes on high-income earners that county voters passed, this measure would tax capital gains on everybody, regardless of income level, and relies on a revenue stream far less stable than property or even income taxes. That means tax collectors would have to suss out who might have made taxable capital gains, rather than just piggy-backing on filers’ taxable incomes as they do with the Metro homeless services and preschool taxes.

No other city or state that funds eviction relief lawyers chose Multnomah County’s path. Some use federal funds. Boulder, Colo., imposed a tax in 2021 on rental units. But the most common approach is the one we’d suggest: earmarking existing tax revenue.

Government is all about the efficient allocation of scarce resources. Local voters are already paying Multnomah County more than $100 million a year to reduce homelessness through the 2020 Metro supportive housing services measure. A big part of that money already goes to helping marginally housed people stay in their homes—but the county’s own reports show it has failed to spend even half the money it gets from Metro. In other words, the money Eviction Representation for All wants is already sitting in county coffers, unspent.

There’s no question that evictions are a serious problem in Multnomah County and across Oregon. But we’d argue that the reason is policymakers’ failure to plan for population growth, leaving the state short by more than 110,000 housing units.

More housing, rather than a poorly conceived tax in a county that already passed two large local income taxes in 2020, is the right policy solution. That and spending existing new tax dollars that voters already approved for the precise purpose of keeping people in their homes is the right answer.

We encourage voters to reject this sloppy, unnecessary measure and instead raise their voices to encourage the county to deploy existing funds to help more residents avoid eviction.

The latest ballot measure would distribute an estimated $133 million over the next five years to programs reaching more than 15,000 Portland kids.

And it appears the money actually reaches them. Administrative expenses are capped at 5%, and the program produces readable and detailed annual reports. The last audit of the program showed that grant recipients met more than 70% of their outcome goals, which isn’t ideal but still remarkable given pandemic-related staffing shortages.

It’s so well run, says City Commissioner Dan Ryan, “it might be the cleanest, tightest, highest-functioning relationship that the city and county participate in.” And, to their further credit, Ryan and the Children’s Levy’s other caretakers have not increased the size of their request to voters. It remains at about 40 cents on every $1,000 of assessed property value.

Ryan is only the latest Dan on the Portland City Council responsible for shuttling the program past voters. Saltzman was a fierce proponent of the tax until he retired in 2018, after an unsuccessful bid to change state law to make the levy a permanent taxing district. “It’s his legacy,” Ryan says. “I don’t want to fumble that.”

That’s a healthy pressure for him to feel—and it’s why we prefer the five-year levy renewal to a taxing district. Local officials should have to show what they did with the public’s money. And that’s also why voters should renew the Children’s Levy, which has demonstrated a track record of real good for vulnerable kids. Vote yes.

What Peterson would bring to a picnic:

gonna go with the brisket. I’ve been known to deliver a mean brisket.”

JORDAN HUNDELT

OREGON’S APPETITE FOR PSILOCYBIN IS BEING FED OUTSIDE THE LAW.

BY ANTHONY EFFINGER

CONTINUED ON PAGE 12

THREE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS.

That’s how much it’s going to cost to swallow 4 grams of psilocybin mushrooms and undergo a six-hour therapy session at EPIC Healing Eugene—if and when the clinic gets its license to run a “psilocybin service center” and its owner, Cathy Jonas, gets her facilitator license after undergoing 300 hours of training and passing a state-mandated test.

Together, those two licenses will cost her $12,000 a year. On top of that, she must spend thousands on a security system, liability insurance, and a 375-pound safe. All in, Jonas estimates she’ll spend $60,000 to open her service center and, at $3,500 a session, she expects to barely break even. “They have really made this hard,” Jonas, 56, says.

Two and a half years ago, Oregon voters approved Measure 109, making Oregon the first state in the nation to legalize the supervised use of psilocybin mushrooms. But that freedom comes with fine print. The program requires users to trip only in the presence of a trained facilitator in a service center using psilocybin grown by state-approved manufacturers and tested by state-licensed labs.

All of that adds costs. The result is a price tag that’s going to astonish the fungi-curious. A single session—5 grams, six hours—will cost more than the median Oregonian’s biweekly take-home pay.

Still willing to pony up? Sorry, get in line. At press time, no service centers—the only places you’re allowed to take psilocybin legally—had been licensed by the Oregon Health Authority. Three manufacturers, one testing lab, and just four facilitators had been licensed as of April 25.

In other words, the ballot measure created an appetite that the regulated system seems unprepared to satisfy. The outcome? The legalization of psilocybin mushrooms in Oregon is spurring an expansion of the decades-old illegal market.

“There are people and organizations openly facilitating psilocybin trips outside of the state-run system in Oregon,” says Vince Sliwoski, a lawyer at Harris Bricken Sliwoski LLP who specializes in cannabis and now psilocybin. “You don’t have to look that hard to find them. There’s going to be a big underground economy for this stuff.”

That underground is already expanding, people in the industry say. Facilitators, some of them newly graduated from trip training programs, are leading sessions in their homes, in Airbnbs, and on psychedelic retreats abroad. Amateur mycologists are growing hundreds of grams of Psilocybe cubensis in plastic tubs in basements around town.

A shaman named James Hin has opened the PSILO Temple, a church in Eugene, where psilocybin is the sacrament for the dozens of congregants who come to Hin’s “Wisdom Wednesday” services twice a month.

The former accounting executive says his church is protected by both the First Amendment and the Religious Freedoms Restoration Act of 1993, passed by Congress after the Supreme Court upheld a move by the Oregon Department of Human Resources to deny unemployment benefits to two Native Americans who were fired from drug counseling

THE FACILITATORS

jobs because they had tested positive for peyote, which they had taken during a religious ceremony. “I’ll defend these protections all day,” Hin says. “I’m not some hippie in a van.”

To be sure, much of the underground activity predates Measure 109. Mushrooms grow like, well, mushrooms, in the Northwest, and Ken Kesey, one of the leaders who alerted the white, Western world to the power of psychedelics in the 1960s, is the son of Oregon soil.

Nate Howard, co-founder of InnerTrek, a facilitator training program, says the legal regime is a product of the underground, not the other way around.

“The underground has been thriving from the start,” Howard says. “That’s what made it possible for Measure 109 backers to collect enough signatures to pass it.”

But the mushroom economy went into hyperdrive after Measure 109 passed, along with Measure 110, which decriminalized possession of shrooms and most other illicit drugs.

For proof, recall the five-hour lines at Shroom House, the much-loved, illegal and short-lived psilocybin outlet on West Burnside Street that the cops shut down in December (“Mushroom Pop-Up,” WW, Dec. 6, 2022).

Or visit High Desert Spores off Northeast Fremont Street, where Don and his wife, Kay, the owners, sell hundreds of pounds of rye berries and sorghum, preferred growth media for mushrooms of all kinds so that people all over Oregon can grow their own.

Even those who have embraced Oregon’s legal shroom system question its merits. Naturopathic physician Erica Zelfand is one of four lead educators at InnerTrek, the first facilitator training program to disgorge graduates into the world, last March. She took the course at the same time.

“What’s the incentive for somebody to actually want to do this work above ground when they can go underground and make it much more accessible?” Zelfand asks.

WW set out last month to explore the shroom underground, talking to trip guides, growers, religious leaders, and peddlers of shroom-growing supplies (and swallowing tincture sacraments). None had remorse about working around the rules because, for them, psychedelic mushrooms are too promising for mental health (and even world peace) to leave only to the wealthy who can afford state-sponsored trips.

We’re not trying to get anybody busted. Unlike the balls-out proprietors of Shroom House, the people running underground sessions are disguising their activity or finding legal shields, and we’ve respected that, with varying degrees of anonymity.

Here’s a look at what’s beyond the state’s purview.

Originally from Dallas, Bryce, 38, had been meditating for most of his life when he took a small, 1.5-gram dose of mushrooms at the Oregon Coast about five years ago.

“All of a sudden, I had this experience of my body and the universe dissolving into the same continuum of consciousness,” Bryce says. “It sounds cliché, but the light just came on.”

Bryce, already a licensed clinical social worker, was among the first class of graduates last month from one of the state-approved psilocybin facilitator courses required to work (someday) in a psilocybin service center.

The training lasted six months and cost him $7,900. Now, Bryce is licensed to work in clinics that don’t yet exist, and might not for months. So, last fall, he added psilocybin sessions to his counseling options, without a license.

He gets his clients through Google, where he advertises psychedelic services, and through word of mouth. He agreed to talk to WW on the condition we give him a pseudonym because, by operating outside of Measure 109’s rules, he risks violating state drug laws.

“Any activity in the unregulated space is subject to criminal penalties, which is a matter for law enforcement,” Angela Allbee, manager of OHA’s Psilocybin Services Section, said in an email.

Bryce, who has little tolerance for the New Age tropes that often accompany psychedelics, goes to clients’ homes. If they come from out of town, he goes to their Airbnbs. He charges $200 per 50-minute session for a multistep program that begins with five preparatory sessions, culminates in a trip, and ends with an integration session in which trippers aim to apply the awareness gained during the psychedelic journey into their daily life.

The lengthy prep is necessary, Bryce says, because he recommends 8 grams of mushrooms for trips, a higher dose than most. Oregon Psilocybin Services allows a maximum of 50 milligrams of psilocybin, the amount found in about 5 grams of dried mushrooms, another problem with the program.

“When people take these high doses, they start to feel like they’re dissolving into everything,” Bryce says. “If people aren’t ready for that, it can be really overwhelming. I do a series of meditations that simulate that effect for people when

“I’m not some hippie in a van.”

they’re sober.”

All in, tripping with Bryce costs $3,200, but it includes many more hours of prep per trip. He offers a 25% discount for people of color.

Bryce is one of many people leading psychedelic trips in Oregon’s residential neighborhoods. June (also a pseudonym) has been guiding people on trips for six years.

A jill of all trades who has worked in film, publishing and consumer-product development, she has no pretenses about being a shaman or even a therapist. She refers to her practice as “holding space” for people so they can trip safely and extract as much from the experience as possible through preparation before, and integration after.

June, 50, holds space for just two clients a week, which is a full schedule, she says. Trips last for hours, and they can be intense. She charges between $800 and $1,500, based on need.

She got into the practice after a single mushroom trip lifted her own stubborn case of depression. Friends heard about it and wanted the same, so she began sitting with them during trips. People liked her style and, through word of mouth, she built a practice. Most of her clients are dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder and complex trauma from childhood.

Unlike Bryce and many other underground facilitators, June never considered taking a training program, because it felt like a “slap in the face” to people who have been leading clients on trips for years, including Indigenous people whose forebears have been at it for centuries. Now the programs’ graduates are hitting the street after just six months.

“My hunch is that the underground is going to get completely flooded with trained facilitators who aren’t any more credentialed or licensed than me,” June says. “I don’t see these people getting super excited about working with psychedelic medicine and then not doing it just because they can’t work out of a registered service center.”

Indeed, a company called Psychedelic Passage “curates a network of U.S.-based psychedelic guides and trip sitters who facilitate in-person ceremonial psychedelic experiences with an emphasis on harm reduction,” according to its website. Psychedelic Passage offers guides in all of Oregon’s major cities (and even smaller ones like Albany, Tualatin and West Linn).

The company, with a co-founder in Bend, appears to skirt the rules by requiring that you BYOS (bring your own shrooms).

THE RETREAT LEADER

Type “psilocybin retreat” into Google and dozens of options pop up, including many in Jamaica, where psilocybin has always been legal. The Caribbean nation is trying to create a tourism business out of tripping. A company called MycoMeditations has four retreat sites there, including a super-luxe one at Bluefields Bay that starts at $13,100 per person.

Among the people who have led retreats in Jamaica is an Oregonian: naturopathic physician Erica Zelfand.

On her website, Zelfand calls herself “a fiery empath and the most extroverted introvert I know.” She’s in another country now, and asked us not to name it because that might jeopardize her effort to get citizenship. Reached by Zoom, she stood in front of a yard full of tropical greenery, which, combined with her sunny demeanor, took the edge off Oregon’s cold, drenched April.

Zelfand just graduated from InnerTrek in

March, getting her certificate while she taught courses there. She says Oregon’s psilocybin program is a good start, but she doesn’t expect to practice in-state anytime soon.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Zelfand says. “The Oregon model is a little too careful in my personal opinion. But it’s always better to start rigid and then loosen over time.”

Zelfand agrees with Bryce that one of the biggest problems in Oregon is the “hilariously low” maximum dose, 5 grams. Considered a “hero dose” for most people, where their egos melt into the universe like butter, 5 grams may not be enough for someone on antidepressants. Drugs like Lexapro act on the same neurotransmitter— serotonin—as psilocin, a metabolite of psilocybin.

“The last person I worked with who was on an antidepressant needed 12 grams,” Zelfand says.

For that and other reasons, Zelfand is living abroad and inviting people to psilocybin retreats there. Her six-day programs cost $3,333 and include accommodation, meals and snacks. She also offers massages, yoga, guided meditation, “shadow work,” and space in a sweat lodge.

Also, the weather is better.

THE MYCOLOGY SUPPLIER

Walk into High Desert Spores just off Northeast Fremont Street and you’d think it’s little more than a gardening boutique, albeit one with oddities like “pasteurized substrates” and “sterilized grains.”

A display wheel at the counter has dirty Q-tips in sealed envelopes with names like Hillbilly Pumpkin, Leucistic Golden Teacher and Jedi Mind Fuck. Get closer and you see that the dirt stains are actually bluish spores from the genus Psilocybe and the species cubensis (the American mycologist who described them found his first specimens in Cuba in 1906).

Put them in a dark warm place, add some love,

High Desert Spores near Northeast Fremont Street sterilizes the grains needed to grow mushrooms of all kinds, not just psychedelic ones, in a row of autoclaves— machines that use high pressure and temperature to kill viruses and bacteria that can interfere with mushroom spores. Don, the owner, says business is booming.

and they’ll grow into magic mushrooms. One envelope of Jedi Mind Fuck spores costs $25. The spores and materials used to grow psychedelic mushrooms contain no psilocybin. Even so, they fall into a legal gray zone because U.S. law makes it illegal to sell any “equipment, product or material” that is “primarily intended” to make a controlled substance.

Don, 47, the tall, jovial owner with a trimmed beard and royal blue polo shirt emblazoned with his corporate logo, says he’s on the right side of the law.

“If we were a pizza restaurant, we would be Papa Johns,” says Don, who didn’t want his last name in print. “I’d give you all the ingredients to take it home and bake it yourself. But I’m not going to give you the finished product. I’m not

“Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

ALLISON BARR

going to give you the cooked pizza.”

To get a sense of the demand from DIY mushroom growers in Portland, ask Don to take you through a curtain to the back of the store. There, he has installed a 10-foot-long autoclave that has a circular hatch like a torpedo tube. He’s working to get it running and, in the meantime, uses a row of smaller machines.

Autoclaves are industrial-strength pressure cookers (think Instant Pots) that use high pressure and temperature to kill bacteria and viruses. Unlike making pizza, almost everything involved in growing mushrooms must be sterilized to near-operating room levels because other life forms will outcompete them in the nutrient-rich environments they prefer.

Don moved to his new location near Fremont from Milwaukie because he needed more space to meet demand. (Before that, he was in Bend. Hence, the High Desert name.)

Don packs his autoclaves with substrates and grains—everything his customers need to grow mushrooms of all kinds, not just psychedelic ones. Don glows when he talks about lion’s mane, cordyceps and turkey tail. Like many in the mushroom economy, he’s more coy about psilocybin.

“There is so much trauma, anxiety and depression in this world right now,” he says. “And people are sick and tired of pharmaceutical drugs. Our hospital system is nothing more than a glorified drug dealer pushing super-expensive things. I’m not saying that mushrooms are the cure, but they are a great tool to have in the toolbox, and if you’re willing to explore it, then you should have access, and it shouldn’t cost you $3,000 or $4,000.”

THE SHAMAN

In the Catholic Church, the sacrament comes near the end, in the form of a wafer and wine transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ. At the PSILO Temple in Eugene, the sacrament comes at the beginning, in the form of psilocybin dissolved in vodka.

At a Wednesday service this month, James Hin called congregants (who had signed waivers) to receive two squirts of the tincture from a dropper. He offered a chunk of psilocybin chocolate to those who wanted to go a little deeper.

“It’s when you have a calling but you don’t use it,” he says.

Hin, who is clean-cut and built like an athlete, has a pretty nonmystical background for a shroom shaman. Originally from Morris County, N.J., he has a master’s degree in organizational and social psychology from the London School of Economics. He worked for years as an organizational development manager, first at a company that made sprinkler systems and then at an accounting firm, both near San Diego.

In the midst of deep depression in 2017, Hin went online to find out how to kill himself and make it look like an accident so his kids wouldn’t know. He found an ayahuasca documentary instead. He tried the drug. “Ayahuasca saved my life,” Hin says. “It didn’t heal everything, but it gave me hope to keep exploring life.”

Later on, he set up a psilocybin trip, and on the way there he stopped at a Guitar Center store and bought a singing bowl, a Tibetan instrument that’s become popular in the West. About 90 minutes into the trip, Hin struck the bowl with a mallet and his life changed. He saw sound waves in the air, and he started chanting.

“I had no idea where the chants came from,” he says. “The sound bowl disappeared out of my

Not all participants went up for the sacrament, but everyone listened to a sermon by Hin. In it, he urged people to join the PSILO Temple (it’s pronounced “sillo temple,” and each letter stands for one of Hin’s values; O is for “oneness”). Membership costs just $44 a year. He also described “stoned ape theory,” which holds that early hominids discovered psychoactive mushrooms and they supercharged human evolution.

After he finished, the group of about 60 unrolled yoga mats and lay down to listen to Hin and a musician named Yiyetta Love play singing bowls, strike gongs and sing, creating a “sound bath.”

Hin, 37, says he discovered he was a shaman in his late 20s, when he experienced “shaman sickness.”

hands. And then it came back, and it felt like it came from a thousand years away.”

Hin did the logical thing after that: He moved to Eugene, where mushrooms and other plant medicines are as common as bratwursts in Chicago. He planned to stay in accounting, but he decided to found the PSILO Temple instead.

Hin says he operates openly and makes psilocybin available at almost no cost because the world needs the compound to survive. “I feel like I was sent here from the universe to do this,” he says.

Sam Chapman, campaign manager for Measure 109, says psychedelic therapy is evolving, and early adopters in the state’s legal system are taking some risk.

“ With any bootstrapping startup business,

Founder James Hin and musician Yiyetta Love play singing bowls during a “sound bath” at a PSILO Temple service in Eugene.

there’s going to be a failure rate,” Chapman says. “This is a serious endeavor, and we want people to have their eyes wide open. Sometimes that requires a little dunk in the cold plunge. Long term, that’s shown to be healthy.”

Depending on their expectations, many graduates of Oregon’s training programs are getting dunked right now. They stumped up thousands for training and having no place to practice.

Iconoclasts like Hin don’t think it has to be that way. It would be ironic if a former accounting executive from California pushed Oregon into a more inclusive, less costly, less bureaucratic regime for state-sponsored tripping. But, right now, James Hin seems as likely a savior as Chapman, or anyone else.

“Our hospital system is nothing more than a glorified drug dealer pushing super-expensive things.”

“I had no idea where the chants came from. The sound bowl disappeared out of my hands. And then it came back, and it felt like it came from a thousand years away.”

COURTESY JAMES HIN

James Hin, founder of the PSILO Temple in Eugene

GET BUSY

LISTEN: Aan Remembers Reese Lawhon at the Mississippi

Local psychedelic hard-pop group Aan will use this special set to pay tribute to Portland musician-artist and their former bassist Reese Lawhon, the Radio Cab driver who was stabbed to death on the job on Easter Sunday. Lawhon stopped playing regularly with the group several years ago, but he sang for their latest record, scheduled for release later this year. Show proceeds will go to organizations providing services to those struggling with mental health issues. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 503-288-3895, mississippistudios.com. 8 pm Wednesday, April 26. $15. 21+.

WATCH: No Man’s Land Film Festival

You can think of No Man’s Land like a much more diverse version of Reel Rock; the sports go beyond cliff scaling, and the athletes are all women, nonbinary or transgender men. The Sports Bra—billed as the first and only bar that exclusively shows women’s sports—is a natural fit to host this Denver-based film festival’s Portland stop. Ten shorts screen in all, covering topics ranging from increasing representation in mountain biking to the formation of a trans running league to combat hateful legislation. The Sports Bra, 2512 NE Broadway, 503-327-8401, eventbrite.com. 8 pm Wednesday-Thursday, April 26-27. Free.

LISTEN: Live Wire With Luke Burbank!

Live Wire Radio has a reputation for booking stellar guest lineups, but the program’s upcoming episode is packed with top talent—some even boast local ties. The panel on April 27 includes acclaimed author Timothy Egan; award-winning poet José Olivarez; multi-instrumentalist Jenny Conlee, who’s best known for her time as a member of the Portland-born Decemberists; and standup comic Mohanad Elshieky,

who was voted one of WW ’s Funniest Five in 2018. Patricia Reser Center for the Arts, 12625 SW Crescent St., Beaverton, 971501-7722, thereser.org. 7:30 pm Thursday, April 27. $25-$35.

GO: The One Motorcycle Show

That roar you hear isn’t a sign of inclement weather on the horizon; rather it’s the growl of more than 300 specialty bikes gearing up for another edition of the world’s largest custom motorcycle show. Stunts galore will be performed on all sorts of wheeled vehicles—from vintage Harleys to BMXs to skateboards. But the multiday event’s biggest draw tends to be the massive collection of motorcycles built by enthusiasts from across the globe. Joining the choir of revved-up engines will be a lineup of 12 bands representing a variety of genres. And you can take a break from bike browsing at the Easy Rider Saloon and get your boots shined at the Danner booth, so wear your finest kicks. Zidell Yards Barge Building, 3121 S Moody Ave., 503-228-8691, the1moto.com.

9 am-10 pm Friday-Saturday and 9 am-3 pm Sunday, April 28-30. $14-$125.

GO: Gathering of the Guilds and 40th Annual Ceramic Showcase

The Oregon Potters Association’s Ceramic Showcase and the Gathering of the Guilds have teamed up to host one of the largest art shows in the Pacific Northwest. More than 500 crafters working with metals, glass, wood, beads, fibers and clays will exhibit their wares. You can also expect three days’ worth of demonstrations—and while not as high octane as those at the motorcycle show, watching knitters, weavers and calligraphers may have its own soothing value. Oregon Convention Center, Hall A, 777 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 800791-2250, gatheringoftheguilds.com. 10 am-7 pm Friday, 10 am-6 pm Saturday, 10 am-4 pm Sunday, April 28-30. Free.

LISTEN: Nattali Rize With Minori

This Australian-born, Jamaican-based artist has been blazing a trail of innovation and conscious messaging for years. Her nationwide Liberate Tour, which kicked off earlier this month, swings through Portland this week. Come hear why Rolling Stone said she has “one of the nation’s most refreshing voices,” and NPR praised her music as “infectious.” The show will feature an opening set straight from Jamaica: Minori, who sang with Rize on the 2021 single “Fire Burning,” combines reggae, hip-hop and dancehall music. The Jack London Revue, 529 SW 4th Ave., 866-777-8932, jacklondonrevue.com. 8 pm Friday, April 28. $20. 21+.

LAUGH: Aces Wild

What better way to kick off the opening of The Siren’s new North Portland location than with a veteran sketch duo? Shelley McLendon and Michael Fetters have been performing together as The Aces since 2010. Aces Wild is their 11th original show, which promises a lot of physical comedy and even some playacting as animals. Consider our interest piqued. The Siren Theater, 3913 N Mississippi Ave., sirentheater.com. 8 pm Friday-Saturday, through May 13. $20 in advance, $25 at the door.

DANCE: Prom Through the Ages

Now through June, there’s a good chance you’ll spot formally attired teenagers on their way to prom. But why let the kids have all the fun? Kimpton Hotel Vintage is hosting an adult version of the dance, which of course has a theme as all proms do: “Through the Ages.” Come clothed in suits or dresses from your favorite decade and dance the night away to music spun by a live DJ. Bonus: Tickets include complimentary wine and beer—an upgrade from the Boone’s Farm and malt liquor you probably chugged at the prom af-

ter-party during your adolescence. Kimpton Hotel Vintage Bacchus Bar, 422 NW Broadway, 855-475-7433, eventbrite.com.

7 pm Saturday, April 29. $65-$110. 21+.

GO: Clinton St. Quarterly Archive Launch

Clinton St. Quarterly is a very Old Portland publication that could have slipped into oblivion were it not for the work of the archivists at Portland State University. The counterculture magazine, which blended politics, culture and art, was published four times a year between 1979 and 1989. Its pages saw the work of Northwest authors like Katherine Dunn and Sallie Tisdale as well as cartoonist and late WW contributor John Callahan. All 73 issues are now accessible at PSU’s library. Portland State University Millar Library, Room 160, 1875 SW Park Ave., library.pdx.edu. 2 pm Tuesday, May 2. Free.

WATCH: Now I Know Why You’re Afraid

The A/V Geeks are devoting an entire evening of screentime to educational films that traumatized countless baby boomer and Gen X kids, in honor of Portland film archivist Dennis Nyback, who died last October. The lineup includes 1951’s Duck and Cover, an Office of Civil Defense project that had schoolchildren constantly questioning when the Russians were going to drop the big one; 1971’s Death Zones, which demonstrated the hazards of loitering instead of going directly home after disembarking from the school bus; and the truly bizarre Toothache of a Clown (1972), whose mission was either to scare kids away from the dentist or circuses. Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton St., 971-808-3331, cstpdx.com. 7 pm Tuesday, May 2. $8.

EVERYBODY TALKS: On April 27, Live Wire host Luke Burbank (right) interviews two panelists with Portland ties: The Decemberists’ Jenny Conlee and WW Funniest Five alum Mohanad Elshieky.

FOOD & DRINK

Stumbling Angel

BY NEIL FERGUSON

Has Portland hit peak pizza?

Being crowned the best pizza city in America has coincided with the opening of even more pizza places around town. New Haven- and Detroit-style pies abound alongside preparations with origins in Chicago, like tavern and deep dish. There are also fusion pizzas with elevated toppings and vegan versions of the baked dough staple.

Industry veterans and husband-and-wife team Anthony Siccardi and Gabriella Casabianca entered the mix three years ago by launching a Neapolitan-style pop-up, which found a permanent home in late 2022 inside the former Handsome Pizza space on Northeast Killingsworth Street. So in a city packed with pizza joints, is No Saint a worthy addition? After my visits, it was clear that the answer is…sort of.

Walking into No Saint, I noticed that, give or take the new paint job and updated chairs, the décor is similar to that of the previous occupant. Notably present is the massive, steampunk-looking woodfired oven that is now used to make much of the menu, but don’t expect the same pies as Handsome.

Before I got to the food, I had to get past the bizarre fast-casual setup during my initial visit. The thing is, No Saint isn’t fast or casual, and its prices are high enough that you should reasonably expect regular table service (more on that later).

The menu at No Saint is minimal and dishes get rotated in and out on a seasonal basis. Your eyes might be drawn to the pizzas, but I found the best way to start the party is with one of the more creative salad offerings. The calamari salad ($16) was a delight, with the squid poached to perfect tenderness and served in a pool of black garlic remouladelike sauce, though the olives cranked up the salt level a bit too high. From there, things took a less impressive turn with the trenne à la vodka ($22). I was enticed by this dish because it gets a final kiss of char in the oven, creating a crunchy top. But that was where the fun stopped. Not even the creamy sauce, well-cooked pasta and dollop of burrata could hide the one-dimensional flavor.

The pizza at No Saint is…OK. If the staff can nail down the cadence of service and the kitchen can produce a more consistent pie, then it has the potential to be solid—maybe even excellent. When I did finally receive my green garlic pizza ($30)—undoubtedly rushed after being forgotten under a

FIRST LOOK: Pho Oregon Beaverton

BY MICHAEL C. ZUSMAN

Pho Oregon, Portland’s 20-year-old Vietnamese beef noodle soup standard bearer, has opened its second outlet after a nearly two-year wait. Pho Oregon Beaverton debuted in March along a fast-moving stretch of Tualatin Valley Highway where strip malls are interspersed with car dealerships.

Paper concealing the construction work inside had been up in the windows for months, belying the promise of a streetside sign displayed for about the same duration.

At last, the finished product has been revealed— and if an early visit was any indication, it was worth the wait.

ROUGHAGE: In addition to pizza, No Saint serves a variety of creative salads.

deluge of orders to go—the crust was doughy and the middle undercooked, with a noticeable absence of char compared to pizzas at neighboring tables. Garlic makes everything better, yet in this case, it couldn’t do much to elevate what felt like a slightly fancy, slightly oily cheese pizza.

The switch from counter to regular table service on my next visit led to a more attentive and comfortable experience, and the staff looked relieved to get to do their job. Maybe it was this welcome adjustment or the early evening sunshine creating an airy and inviting atmosphere, but a calmer mood had taken over the dining room.

The chopped salad ($15) was a winner, presenting as a Caesar with more complexity in both flavor and texture. Sweet, chewy dates complemented the acidity and tangy crunch of the pickled celery, while the funk of the goat gouda and a familiar hit of dill in the homemade buttermilk dressing rounded it out.

Maybe the positive vibes made the pepperoni supreme ($31) more enjoyable, or maybe it was just better executed. Though a few more ’ronis would have made this pizza sing—topping inconsistency is an issue at No Saint—the combination of hot honey, pepperoncini and spiced Coro pepperoni made it the kind of pizza you want to crush in one sitting despite your better judgment. This time around, there was almost too much char despite a somewhat doughy crust, but I could feel the kitchen getting more dialed in.

If there is one saving grace at No Saint, it’s dessert. I like cake and I love Campari, and the Campari cake ($10) is the star of the show on this menu. It’s fluffy, moist and decadent yet so light, anyone who didn’t finish the confection should be eyed with suspicion. Hopefully, No Saint will get more use out of all of the baking space that seemed mostly unoccupied while I was there.

True to its name, No Saint isn’t a divine intervention in Portland’s bustling pizza scene. Given the team behind it and the oven they inherited, the restaurant certainly has potential to be better than just another overpriced neighborhood joint. Between fixing the service model and the quality of the pies on separate visits, you can already see them working out the kinks. Pray that this is a sign No Saint will one day ascend to heavenly pizza status.

EAT: No Saint, 1603 NE Killingsworth St., 503-206-8321, nosaintpdx.com. 5-9 pm Thursday-Sunday.

starters, though there are more than a half-dozen alternatives.

The must-have pho order, the No. 1 ($17), arrives as a steaming, quart-sized cauldron of aromatic awesomeness, founded on beef broth whose aroma of star anise and other warming spices nudges the nostrils. A tangle of perfectly prepared thin rice noodles nestled on the bottom of the bowl is topped with bits of beef tendon, tripe, quartered meatballs, thin slices of round and flank steak, fatty brisket and a little green and white onion.

Standard accompaniments of basil, bean sprouts, lime wedges and jalapeño slices are served on a side plate for your customization pleasure.

Likewise, the tabletop setup includes a ramekin of smoky chile oil plus bottles of fiery Sriracha and sweet hoisin sauces. It is a mad (food) scientist’s play lab.

There are a dozen or more other pho combinations that can be ordered in two sizes, though getting the $15 small almost seems silly when the large is $16. There are chicken and shrimp noodle variations for non-red meat eaters. Salad rolls (shrimp, rice noodle and veg tightly girdled in a thin rice wrapper, $9) or pork skin rolls (filled with finely cut strips of skin and rice noodle, $9.50) are my customary

When the urge for hot soup wanes, Pho Oregon’s menu seems to ramble endlessly with choices, from rice plates and bowls to grilled meats to stews and beyond. Check out the bo la lat (grilled nuggets of betel leaf-wrapped ground beef, $18.50) in the “Vietnamese traditional food” section of the menu. Another can’t miss is the banh xeo chay ($18), a vegetable-filled, rice flourbased crispy crepe distinctively colored and flavored with turmeric. This is merely the tip of the iceberg, which anyone who has visited the original Pho Oregon on Northeast 82nd Avenue already knows.

The only shocking thing about the new Pho Oregon Beaverton is how nearly identical it is to the original outlet. The menu is the same, the beige granite tabletops are the same, the central cashiering station and incorporated shrine are nearly the same, the servers’ bright yellow polo shirts with red “Pho Oregon” trim are the same, and even the number of seats—around 75—is about the same.

Still, it has a fresh new feel compared to the original, which is a little shopworn after two decades of slinging soup. It is light and bright inside, a byproduct of big windows that run along two sides of the building, showcasing an abundance of stylish art on the walls. There is a small parking lot, too, as befits the suburban location, which is shared with heavenly smelling Donut King that, I can say firsthand, was open and had plenty of very fresh doughnuts at 9 pm on a Sunday. Might as well make it a twofer.

EAT: Pho Oregon Beaverton, 12870 SW Canyon Road, Beaverton, 503-747-0814, phooregon.net. 10 am-9 pm Monday-Saturday, 10 am-8 pm Sunday.

No Saint has the potential for greatness with a few tweaks in the pizza kitchen.

TEAMWORK: No Saint founders Anthony Siccardi and Gabriella Casabianca.

Editor: Andi Prewitt Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com

STEAL MY VACATION: Belly Up to Bellingham’s Beer Scene

The port city 90 miles north of Seattle combines the charm of small-town life and big-city amenities.

BY EZRA JOHNSON-GREENOUGH @samuraiartist

ILLUSTRATED BY MCKENZIE YOUNG-ROY @mckenzieyoungart

Not that long ago, Bellingham, Wash., was essentially a glorified rest stop between Seattle and Vancouver, B.C.—the best place for a pee break before you inevitably got stuck at the border crossing.

But that wasn’t always the case. In the early 1900s, Bellingham was a major hub of industry, with canneries, coal mines, railroads and lumber mills positioning it to become one of the Pacific Northwest’s great cities. While that dream died during the Great Depression, Bellingham has quietly grown in the past few decades into a thriving arts and culture center, and it also happens to have one of the best craft beer scenes in the country.

Today, this port city has all the charms of a secluded, small town yet also the energy and amenities you’d expect from a buzzing metropolis. Crumbling historic buildings stand alongside glassy new hotels and condominiums. You can spend an entire day roaming the urban landscape or slip into nature by paddling through Bellingham Bay or hiking across nearby Chuckanut Mountain Park.

The whole time, you’ll always be a stone’s throw away from a small producer of beer. Kudos to Boundary Bay Brewery, one of Washington’s oldest, which planted a seed that grew into a forest of nearly 20 breweries in Whatcom County.

FRIDAY Check In at Hotel Leo

The 1883-built Hotel Leo (1224 Cornwall Ave., 360-746-9097, thehotelleo.com) encapsulates much of what makes Bellingham special, and it’s conveniently located in the center of town. The long-fashionable and busy lodging destination is now split between residents and guests who share a library, gym, mini movie theater, cafe and bar on the premises. You can almost feel the presence of the railroad and coal barons that once filled the building when Bellingham was a boom town.

Pet Some Kitties at Neko Cat Cafe

Ease your travel anxiety with a cat-themed selection of beer, wine, cider or seltzer and then settle in with a fur baby at Neko Cat Cafe (1130 Cornwall Ave., 360-656-6217, nekocatcafe.com). This spot offers the hippest way to either wind down for the night with a drink and a kitten in your lap, or get amped up with an espresso and a ball of yarn for a night of zoomies at the nearby clubs and

Embrace the Darkness at Structures Brewing

Bellingham has a thriving music scene thanks to Western Washington University, independent record label Black Noise, a pair of recording studios and a collection of venues dedicated to live performance that serve as a convenient tour stop for artists traveling between larger markets.

Structures Brewing (601 W Holly St., 360-6566186, structuresbrewing.com) taps into the city’s musical influences by embracing goth-metal aesthetics. Its New Wave brews strike the right chord with mustache-twirling beer snobs and young, crusty punks alike. Though Structures is beginning to go mainstream by opening a second family-friendly location on Holly Street (the original North State Street taproom is temporarily closed for a remodel), the founders haven’t forgotten their dark, edgy roots. Now you can take the kids out for diner burgers and dogs at the new pub and take a selfie with a pentagram and taxidermied skull, just like the pagans would have it.

Journey to Europe at

Otherlands Beer for Brunch

Sunnyland is a quiet neighborhood north of downtown dotted with homes and business parks. Recently, a host of new breweries have moved in, nudged by rising rents in the commercial district. One of those is Otherlands Beer (2121 Humboldt St., 360-746-8118, otherlandsbeer. com), which is easy to miss since it’s sandwiched between two houses on a side street. But this is a can’t-miss stop because of the pub’s vegetarian Eastern European-inspired menu and stellar beers. Set the table with latkes, shakshuka and a gyro, which pair well with the specialty rustic lagers and farmhouse ales.

Craft Meets Industry at Wander Brewing

Consistently undefinable, low-key Wander Brewing (1807 Dean Ave., 360-647-6152, wanderbrewing.com) is arguably the best brewery in Bellingham. After quenching their wanderlust in their younger days, founders Chad and Colleen Kuehl opened Wander in a 1920s-era shipbuilding warehouse and helped kick-start the city’s craft beer renaissance in 2014. There’s virtually no separation between the brewhouse and taproom in the high-ceilinged building, which has steel trusses and a pulley that once hoisted huge ships overhead. Expect everything from IPAs to fruit beers to stouts, with regular rotating food trucks in the beer garden.

Get a Pick-Me-Up at Elizabeth Station

Any great craft beer scene needs an equally impressive beer bar and bottle shop selling local offerings that can stand up to the best competitors from around the world. Elizabeth Station (1400 W Holly St., #101, 360-733-8982, elizabethstation.es) does that and more. The store regularly pairs with breweries to make collaboration beers, features a large draft list, hosts community events, and serves 11-inch Neapolitan-style pizzas that have developed their own fan following. This is the craft drinkers’ living room.

Catch the Sunset at Taylor Shellfish Farms

These oysters are known far and wide thanks to their quality and prevalence on menus, which include those at two of their own Seattle-area oyster bars. But the actual Taylor Shellfish Farms (2182 Chuckanut Drive, Bow, 360-766-6002, taylorshellfishfarms.com), just outside of Bellingham, has long been a hidden gem. It’s worth the drive down the coastline onto a sketchy, one-way gravel road and over the railroad tracks. That’s where you’ll find a working farm with oyster beds, tractors and a washing station. Line up at the stand to order fresh oysters plucked from the Puget Sound, then take the plate of bivalves along with a local beer or bottle of wine down to the pier. Get to shucking and watch the sunset on the bay. It will feel a lot like heaven.

Pump Up at Kulshan Trackside

Tucked among the rusty vestiges of a paper mill and a chlor-alkali plant on a waterfront once dominated by heavy industry lies one of the greatest beer gardens and outdoor concert venues in the Pacific Northwest. Kulshan Brewing’s Trackside (298 W Laurel St., 360-389-5348, kulshanbrewing.com/trackside), scheduled to reopen for the season in late spring, sits next to a bicycle pump track, where kids pop wheelies while parents head to the beer garden to roll out lawn blankets and catch a concert. The 25,000-square-foot space also has a variety of vendors in its shipping container village, including food trucks and ice cream stands, creating a festive atmosphere that lasts all summer.

SHOWS OF THE WEEK

WHAT TO SEE AND WHAT TO HEAR

BY DANIEL BROMFIELD @bromf3

FRIDAY, APRIL 28:

The pagan, primeval, nature-worshipping genre that emerged in Europe as black metal is a natural aesthetic fit for the Pacific Northwest, with its grim weather and long-running tradition of loud guitar rock. Olympia’s Wolves in the Throne Room is one of the bands most synonymous with this “Cascadian” style of black metal, infusing their atmospheric compositions with a feeling anyone living along the Pacific Ring of Fire can relate to: the fear, awe, and wonder that comes from being at the mercy of nature. Hawthorne Theatre, 1507 SE 39th Ave., 503-233-7100, hawthornetheatre.com. 7:30 pm. $25. 21+.

SUNDAY, APRIL 30:

The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die is a big band (their current five-piece lineup is modest by their standards) with a big name and an even bigger legacy. It’s likely that once the dust settles, they’ll be remembered as one of the defining bands of the 2010s American emo revival—and their debut album, Whenever, If Ever, is enough of a classic to merit a 10th anniversary tour of full-album performances. Bossanova Ballroom, 722 E Burnside St., 503-2067630, bossanovaballroom.com. 7:30 pm. $23. All ages.

MONDAY, MAY 1:

The Sound of Memory

Caroline Rose discusses their new album, The Art of Forgetting.

BY MICHELLE KICHERER IG: @MichelleKicherer

As a writing instructor, I often can’t help but look at other art through a literary lens, suggesting to my students to “read like a writer,” but also to listen like a writer. And when I first got hold of art-pop singer-songwriter Caroline Rose’s The Art of Forgetting (New West), I thought, this listens like a memoir.

“I’d never thought of it like that before,” Rose tells WW, going on to explain that the album’s narrative didn’t actually take shape until pretty late in the process. When it did, two major themes emerged: grief and memory.

Avey Tare is easily pigeonholed as the feral and sensual half of Animal Collective’s core duo, whooping and hollering and conjuring the spirits while his partner Panda Bear lays down stately choir boy harmonies. His solo work won’t necessarily dispel this perception, but it’s always been at right angles to his work with his main band, and those who enjoyed last year’s muscular, rhythm-driven AnCo career comeback Time Skiffs will be surprised by the burbling, hermetic art-pop vignettes on his new album, 7s Polaris Hall, 635 N Killingsworth Court, 503-2406088, polarishall.com. 8 pm. $20. 21+.

“Usually when I’m making an album I’ll think about everything at the same time,” Rose explains. This time, the process happened differently. Rose’s album Superstar was released in March 2020, but they weren’t able to celebrate its release with the tour they’d been looking forward to. During that same time, Rose was reeling from a terrible heartbreak, while also navigating their grandmother’s dementia.

“Everything happened at once,” Rose says in a you-know-howthat-goes tone. “And I was just sort of writing about what I was going through as I was going through it.”

They didn’t recognize it when they were in the thick of it, but Rose understood later that they had gone through a transformative time that would profoundly influence The Art of Forgetting. “I realized that this was really chronicling this mini-epoch of my life…and maybe that [realization] point was when I was starting to get through it,” Rose says. “And I was like, it feels like I kind of have a story to tell here.”

In the wake of that realization, Rose began sonically experimenting, looking for ways that audio could enhance the story. One such layer:

voicemails that their grandmother, whom they call Mee Maw, would leave almost daily.

Rose describes these voice clips between songs as “a really grounding part of the narrative,” adding that because “so much of this album is about me being in my head and having a really hard time moving on—and facing myself and loving myself.”

Rose explains how Mee Maw would call every single day, often just to say she was thinking of them or to ask if they’d eaten: “They just care so much. And that’s a really stabilizing thought, to know that no matter what’s going on, my grandma will always check in on me…and whatever I’m going through? It’s OK. It’s fine.”

Mee Maw has since passed away, which Rose says adds another layer of memory around the album. In assembling the songs, Rose recognized the painful duality of two very different types of memory loss: Rose trying to forget their heartbreak, while “meanwhile, my Mee Maw is losing her memory involuntarily and would love to hold onto her memories.”

As far as the album’s structure, Rose describes it as zigzaggy. “When I was going through this time, somebody told me about grief and how as you move through grief it’s kind of like climbing a mountain; some days you’ll be going up and some days you’re going to be going down,” Rose says. “But overall, you’re making your way to the top…so some days I’m stuck in the past, then some days I have this ‘I have to lift myself up and drag myself forward’ kinda feeling.”

SEE IT: Caroline Rose plays the Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell St., 503-284-8686, wonderballroom.com. 9 pm Saturday, April 29. Sold out. 21+.

Editor: Bennett Campbell Ferguson | Contact: bennett@wweek.com

Rusalka Makes Its Portland Debut

The opera by Czech composer Antonín Dvořák plays at the Keller Auditorium.

BY ERIC ASH

“Good evening, opera lovers and mermaids!”

So declared Portland Opera general director Sue Dixon on April 22 as she introduced a Czech opera for its first Portland performance: Rusalka, the ninth (and most internationally renowned) opera of composer Antonín Dvořák (with a libretto by Jaroslav Kvapil).

A dark adaptation of a Slavic folktale about a water spirit’s star-crossed romance with a human prince, the opera debuted at the Keller Auditorium, with two more performances to follow on the 28th and 30th. In addition, special previews, free and open to the public, were held April 15 at the Gresham Library and April 16 at Salem Public Library. There were a few surprise casting changes. Among them Rachel Hauge as the Second Wood-Sprite, replacing Camille Sherman, and Ben Gulley as the Prince, replacing Limmie Pulliam. During her introduction, Dixon stated that Pulliam had to depart the role at the last minute, and Gulley, commendably, was able to fill in with only a day’s rehearsal.

Remarkably, the entire cast performed the opera in its original language, with English subtitles projected above the stage. Štěpán Šimek served as Czech language coach, and while most in the audience would not know the language (at one point, a patron asked his Hungarian-speaking friend if he could pick up the Czech, but his friend replied that

PURA

VIDA

AND ELÉRÉ AT THE GOODFOOT

BY ROBERT HAM

As the pleasantly stoned gent sitting next to me this past Thursday pointed out, the laziest decision the Goodfoot could have made on 4/20 was to truck out a Grateful Dead cover band or some other weed-friendly act. Instead, the long-standing venue in Southeast Portland opted to tap into a much different energy by booking a pair of high-powered salsa ensembles to inspire movement rather than zoning out.

the two languages are unrelated), the cast beautifully captured the poetry of Kvapil’s libretto.

Much of the cast for this production consists of newcomers to the Portland Opera, just as this production is a company newcomer itself. The aforementioned Gulley is one, as are almost all the principal players: Andrew Potter as Vodník, the Spirit of the Lake (alternatively translated in the subtitles as “Water Gnome”), Othalie Graham (acclaimed for her performances as Lady Macbeth) as the Foreign Princess, Jill Grove as Ježibaba, the Witch (a role she also played in Houston and New Orleans), and Karen Vuong (who recently played Mimì in Seattle Opera’s La Bohème) in the title role.

Everyone played their part with their own distinct mannerisms: Potter was a lumbering, lamenting elder spirit; Grove made small, quick gestures (and a wink or two in the audience’s direction) to signal the Witch’s irritable attitude; and Vuong, whose character voluntarily gives up her voice for the second act, acted more with delicacy of movement, at least until Rusalka becomes so enraged she pounds a chaise longue with her fists.

The plot point of Rusalka giving up her voice so a witch can send her onto dry land for the love of a prince is very familiar to audiences thanks to The Little Mermaid. Though this is no happily-ever-after fairy tale, the company made a point of leaning into the similarities in the marketing.

Toi, Toi, Toi, Portland Opera’s magazine, includes a conversation between director Eric Simonson and conductor Elias Grandy, with Simonson highlighting the connection, but also emphasizing that Dvořák took inspiration from the darker folk tales of Eastern Europe. Grandy asserts that “nothing is black and white in life. It’s human.”

To that end, the story lacks a villain among the characters. Instead, the villains are the intangible perils of loneliness, desperation, poor communication, and the wandering eyes of men, which all compound over three tragic acts. Even Ježibaba is no villain. At worst, she is easily fed up with Rusalka, but the comical weariness of Grove’s performance made her an instant crowd favorite.

Equally popular were the three WoodSprites: Madeline Ross, Rachel Hauge, and Jasmine Johnson invited the audience to laugh along with their characters’ youthful, self-absorbed mirth. A particular highlight was the moment where they all sat and gazed into a hand mirror together, as if they were taking a selfie.

After years of popular demand, Rusalka has finally arrived in Portland, and all involved earn an enthusiastic “Bravi tutti!”

SEE IT: Rusalka plays at the Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 503-248-4335, portlandopera.org.

7:30 pm Friday, April 28, and 2 pm Sunday, April 30. $40-$250.

Pura Vida Orquesta has become something of a proving ground for Portland’s current influx of jazz talent. Led by saxophonist and vocalist Gabriel Martinez, the group has filled out their horn section with local players like Cyrus Nabipoor, Adriana Wagner and Noah Simpson.

On this occasion, the Orquesta called on a pair of pillars within the community: trumpeter Farnell Newton and trombonist Chris Shuttleworth. The two men acted as the bellows, helping to crank up the heat as they traded solos and encouraged the rest of this large ensemble to amp up the intensity in response.

No additional help on that front was needed for Eléré. Playing their first show outside of their hometown of Seattle, the octet seemed intent on proving their mettle to a new audience and, especially, the many dancers that were in constant motion throughout the evening.

Each song felt like being blissfully at the mercy of the ocean. Just when one wave of hip-swinging percussion and psych guitar subsided, another one, generated by their three-member horn section and group vocals would follow right behind. You know, just like the sensation of being well and truly stoned. Huh, maybe the Goodfoot knew what it was doing booking these bands on the highest of high holidays after all.

MOVIES

Editor: Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Contact: bennett@wweek.com

STREAMING WARS

YOUR WEEKLY FILM QUEUE

BY CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER @chance_s_p

HOLLYWOOD PICK

Sister Act

Siblings become ruthless rivals in Portland filmmaker Devin Fei-Fan Tau’s thriller Half Sister s.

BY CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER @chance_s_p

At last, Victor Hugo can rest easy knowing the Super Troopers guys have made their own Quasimodo movie. In Quasi, the Broken Lizard troupe (Beer Fest Club Dread) plucks the famous hunchback out of his bell tower and wedges him between the dueling conspiracies of a king and a pope in the 13th century.

Per usual, the five Broken Lizard members (Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske) share the writing credit and the major roles, mostly in haughty, mewing, Renaissance Faire English accents. With all due respect to Quasi’s hump squishing and draconian torture, time may have slightly softened the quintet’s gross-out style, but the film’s good nature nearly carries it through 99 minutes without exhaustion.

Lemme never quite puts his stamp on the Quasi character (relative to his castmates, not Lon Chaney). But Chandrasekhar (King Guy) and Soter (Pope Cornelius) have a ball sophomorically riffing on an otherwise smart gag about their divine right’s absurdity.

Visually, Quasi rests cheaply between Drunk History and History of the World, Part II—it’s all goofy, anachronistic fun. We’ve all seen a crowd of Bostonians go nuts for “Sweet Caroline”; surely there’s room for a pub of medieval Frenchmen to boisterously belt “Frère Jacques.” Hulu.

Raised as competitors more than kin, estranged siblings Leeza and Isabel must engage in one final game on the wobbliest of playing fields. When their cruel grandmother passes, the two half-sisters—Isabel, a freshly disgraced author, and Leeza, who is on a brief funeral leave from prison—return to their rural Oregon stomping grounds in search of a life-changing inheritance check.

That’s the pressure-cooker setup of Half Sisters, the new thriller and debut narrative feature by Portland filmmaker Devin Fei-Fan Tau.

With its Portland premiere at Clinton Street Theater on April 28 and a VOD release set for July 21, Half Sisters finds Tau working in a new direction. He’s made two feature-length documentaries— notably Who’s on Top? (2020), a George Takei-narrated film about LGBTQ Portlanders attempting to summit Mount Hood. So how did he go from an inspirational, humanist documentary to a twisting, cutthroat thriller?

“My drug is really seeing people’s eyes light up when the camera is rolling,” says Tau of his documentary passions. But the director found that “drug” also applied to finding the truth alongside his Half Sisters actors: Kristy Dawn Dinsmore (Vikings) and Sydney Winbush (Shrill).

Influenced by David Fincher’s The Game (1997) and Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017), Half Sisters toys violently with how the well of family can be poisoned by deep-rooted prejudice and its constant denial.

“I don’t think you should say Get Out and Half Sisters in the same sentence out of respect to Jordan Peele’s amazing movie, but I do love that there are some of us filmmakers trying to thread this really fine needle,” Tau says. “How do we make a commercially viable movie but have themes and stories within it that maybe you can’t say out loud? We hide the medicine in the sugar and make it entertainment.”

These themes in Half Sisters took fuller shape when Portland screenwriter J. Alexander Johnson got hold of Joe Leone’s original spec script. Tau says Johnson’s contributions to the Half Sisters script were so valuable that they’re now working together on a futuristic sci-fi movie, The Gallery

Without necessarily naming the concepts, Half Sisters clearly has its fun with white fragility, visually suggests the carceral pipeline that’s ensnared Leeza, and questions the powerful pull toward recon-

ciliation (however unearned) that works its gravity on communities and families. That last point was personal for Tau and drew him toward the initial script.

“The conflicts between the two sisters are fueled by my conflicts with my two older brothers,” he says. “Because I’m gay, I always say I’m the sister, but I have a complicated relationship with them: the miscommunication of saying something one way and having it be misinterpreted, the gaslighting, the constant verbal jabs and, in my case, the physical jabs.”

Most of Half Sisters lets loose in a tony farmhouse in Silverton, Oregon. Once the hunt for the inheritance begins, Isabel and Leeza exist in a frenzied arrested development across the 300-acre property. Much to Tau’s delight, that house (found on VRBO) came prefabricated with rural thriller features: the private road, the murky pond, the pitch-dark crawlspace. It was crucial, he says, to pursue the right locations for the film, even if reaching for something aesthetically high end can be challenging.

“Not to diss indie filmmakers in Portland, but sometimes I’ve seen my colleagues and friends make compromises with locations just because that’s all we could get,” Tau says. “Like, hey, my friend has this basement, so let’s just film there. Versus, maybe your friend has a rich uncle and maybe they have a penthouse in the Pearl we could use…”

Penthousewise, the film’s few Portland scenes focus on Isabel (Dinsmore), a white memoirist who’s made her career marketing her marriage to a Black woman. The script amplifies Isabel’s “Karen-ness” to sometimes absurdist levels, Tau admits, but it’s informed by his experiences in the business world.

Having directed several dozen corporate films, sometimes for Fortune 500 companies, Tau says he’s had an upsetting front-row seat to “performative allyship.” Or “hypocrisy,” as the 47-year-old says his generation used to call it.

“I wanted to fire a warning shot to these people I’ve worked with in the past,” he says. “Like hey, you didn’t see your name this time, but look out for the next film.”

SEE IT: Half Sisters plays at the Clinton Street Theater, 2522 SE Clinton St., 971-808-3331, cstpdx.com. 7 pm Friday, April 28. $12.

TOGETHER IN THE DARK: Kristy Dawn Dinsmore and Sydney Winbush.

ARE YOU THERE, GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET.

A girl opens her jaws wide, revealing a mouthful of chewed-up marshmallows. That’s one of the first images we see in Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret., and it’s a declaration that what follows won’t be a prettified portrait of girlhood. True to the Judy Blume novel on which it’s based, the film is a heartfelt, honest tale of an 11-year-old girl confronting three of the most powerful forces in the universe: family, puberty and faith. Writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig (The Edge of Seventeen) sets the film in the 1970s (when the book was published), but it never feels like a kitschy relic. When Margaret (Abby Ryder Fortson) longs for her first period, yearns for the boy who mows her front lawn, or struggles to understand why religion ruptured her family, her every emotion is here, now, overpowering. As Blume’s adapter, Fremon Craig stands on the shoulders of a literary giant, but she brings her own flourishes to the story, like a shadowy shot of Margaret’s parents, Barbara (Rachel McAdams) and Herb (Benny Safdie), tenderly holding each other as they watch Barbara’s parents, Paul and Mary (Gary Houston and Mia Dillon), drive off into the night. When Margaret learns that Paul and Mary are conservative Christians who disowned their daughter for marrying a Jew, she’s horrified that anyone could be cruel to her mother. “She’s nice to everyone,” she says, a line that plays over a scene of a smiling Barbara holding the door for a line of strangers. Margaret has a lot to say about God and to God—even though she often doubts His existence—but the best thing about Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. is that it has little use for deities. The only higher power it serves is kindness. PG-13. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bridgeport, Cascade, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Mill Plain 8, Movies On TV, Progress Ridge, Vancouver Mall, Vancouver Plaza.

BEAU IS AFRAID

Do not listen to anyone who claims to understand Beau

Is Afraid after the first viewing. Written and directed by Ari Aster (Midsommar Hereditary), the film is a comedy crossed with the nightmare of a fully grown mama’s boy (with some farcical lovemaking and an animated sequence thrown in for good measure). Does Aster have any insight into masculinity or motherhood? Has he created a soulless, swaggering compendium of weirdness? Either way, I can’t stop thinking about Beau

Is Afraid, or its epically unlucky protagonist (Joaquin Phoenix). Beau’s insane misadventures defy explanation, but let it suffice to say that the nearly three-hour film chronicles his attempts to attend the funeral of his mother (Patti LuPone) after she is decapitated by a falling chandelier. With the zeal of a born-again book of Job fan, Aster turns the entire universe against Beau. When he comes home, of course there’s a warning on his door about a brown recluse spider in the building; when he opens the door, of course that very spider is lurking in his apartment (let’s not even talk about the sequence with the stabbing, the partygoers and the water bottle). Beau Is Afraid is so hysterical you may groan when it abandons joyous lunacy for a blunt conclusion in which Beau is literally put on trial for being a terrible son. It’s enough to make you want to scream, “We get it! Beau has issues with his mom! Jeez!”

After two tightly scripted horror hits, Aster may now be lost in a web of quirky pretensions and

indulgences, but that shouldn’t stop audiences from savoring the mesmerizingly demented new design he’s woven.

R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON.

Bridgeport, Cascade, Cedar Hills, Cinema 21, Clackamas, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Laurelhurst, Lloyd Center, Vancouver Mall.

GUY RITCHIE’S THE COVENANT

The Covenant stars Jake Gyllenhaal, but Dar Salim is the star of the show. Or at least that’s what the movie wants us to believe. Gyllenhaal plays John Kinley, a former U.S. Army sergeant and veteran of the war in Afghanistan who returns to rescue Ahmed (Salim), an interpreter who saved his life. The Covenant takes its time getting to the botched operation that allows the interpreter to rise to the occasion, with the Taliban subsequently fumbling all of its opportunities to capture him (though the incompetence on both sides is never commented on). Extended gunfights notwithstanding, The Covenant is principally a sentimental film; it’s less about the covenant between its two main characters so much as between the United States government and its own citizens. It is as always important to reassure Americans that we at least mean well with our pointless destructive wars, not like “bad” countries that only start wars for malicious reasons. A person predisposed to believe that might find The Covenant enjoyable. I did not. R. WILLIAM SCHWARTZ. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Ev-

ergreen Parkway, Hilltop, Movies on TV, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Progress Ridge, Studio One, Vancouver Plaza, Wilsonville.

TO CATCH A KILLER

To say a movie about gun violence is timely is a troubling indictment of our perpetual “right now.” That reality is reflected in the English-language debut of Argentine filmmaker Damián Szifron (Wild Tales), who takes direct aim at America’s gun culture with unapologetically visceral depictions of senseless violence—while missing the mark by obsessing over the people who pull the trigger. The catalyst for the story begins during a Baltimore New Year’s celebration, as random gunshots begin cracking through the air, leaving several nameless victims dead.

One of the first to respond is a young officer named Eleanor Falco (Shailene Woodley), who attempts to take charge of a chaotic situation in hopes of finding the culprit. FBI agent Geoffrey Lammark (the incomparable Ben Mendelsohn) sees something in Eleanor, recruiting her to the investigation. With so much focus on the chase, Szifron never taps into the emotional wreckage experienced by the victims, but Woodley and Mendelsohn successfully reveal the human beings behind the badges. There may be more procedural intrigue in an episode of To Catch a Predator, but taking aim at gun violence through the eyes of two compelling characters does create a dynamic worth watching, as long as you go in with low expectations.

R. RAY GILL JR. Movies on TV.

After Hours (1985)

One of the enduring strengths of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours is the half-dozen different audience readings and experiences it can provide.

For starters, you could simply let the film’s dream-logic comedy crash on you like a wave, as Upper Eastsider Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) ventures downtown to meet a stranger (Rosanna Arquette) in Soho, loses his cash and his keys, and experiences the neighborhood slowly encircling him like a boa constrictor.

Then, within After Hours’ surrealist packaging, there’s the intense tactility of the film’s dripping papier-mâché sculptures, 24-hour diners, German leather clubs and the bizarre sensation of Paul getting rained on and drying off three different times.

Or sink your teeth into the period-specific cultural tourism of an ’80s yuppie who tries to mesh with artists and service-industry workers and has his bubble burst by a string of recognizable bit players (Catherine O’Hara chief among them).

What’s more, there’s a compelling reading here about how far off the handle a person would fly if they were unhoused for even 10 hours, convinced in short order (and not wrong) that the city is out to end them.

Best of all, in 97 exhilarating minutes, Scorsese balances all these qualities in a film that’s rarely mentioned alongside his opuses but probably should be. It takes a generational filmmaker to put an audience through a spin cycle so patently unreal and gritty at the same time. 5th Avenue, April 28-30.

ALSO PLAYING:

Academy: Spirited Away (2001), April 28-May 4. Cinema 21: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), April 29. Clinton: Sorry to Bother You (2018), May 1. Hollywood: True Stories (1986), April 27. Tammy and the T-Rex (1994), April 28. Back to the Future (1985), April 29. Suburbia (1983), April 29. Kwaidan (1964), April 30.

OUR KEY

: THIS MOVIE IS EXCELLENT, ONE OF THE BEST OF THE YEAR.

: THIS MOVIE IS GOOD. WE RECOMMEND YOU WATCH IT.

: THIS MOVIE IS ENTERTAINING BUT FLAWED.

: THIS MOVIE IS A STEAMING PILE.

YOUR BACKSTAGE PASS TO THE NEWSROOM

STREAMING ON ALL MAJOR PLATFORMS

by Jack Kent

JONESIN’

"On

BY MATT JONES

ARIES (March 21-April 19): According to a study by Newsweek magazine, 58 percent of us yearn to experience spiritual growth; 33 percent report having had a mystical or spiritual experience; 20 percent of us say we have had a revelation from God in the last year; and 13 percent have been in the presence of an angel. Given the astrological omens currently in play for you Aries, I suspect you will exceed all those percentages in the coming weeks. I hope you will make excellent use of your sacred encounters. What two areas of your life could most benefit from a dose of divine assistance or intervention? There’s never been a better time than now to seek a Deus ex machina (More info: https://tinyurl.com/GodIntercession)

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): After the fall of the Roman Empire, political cohesion in its old territories was scarce for hundreds of years. Then a leader named Charlemagne (747–814) came along and united much of what we now call Western Europe. He was unusual in many respects. For example, he sought to master the arts of reading and writing. Most other rulers of his time regarded those as paltry skills that were beneath their dignity. I mention this fact, Taurus, because I suspect it’s a propitious time to consider learning things you have previously regarded as unnecessary or irrelevant or outside your purview. What might these abilities be?

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): I'm turning this horoscope over to Nigerian poet Ijeoma Umebinyuo. She has three messages that are just what you need to hear right now. 1. "Start now. Start where you are. Start with fear. Start with pain. Start with doubt. Start with hands shaking. Start with voice trembling but start. Start and don't stop. Start where you are, with what you have." 2. "You must let the pain visit. You must allow it to teach you. But you must not allow it to overstay." 3. "Write a poem for your 14-year-old self. Forgive her. Heal her. Free her."

ACROSS

1. Dutch flower

6. "Oh, ___ ..."

10. ALL ___ (THIS STYLE)

14. Adjective on taqueria

menus

15. Without manners

16. One part of a whole

17. Video game designer

Sid who created the "Civilization" series

18. Michael's "Family Ties" role

19. Present time, for short?

20. Person who picks up after an annual NFL or NBA event?

23. Hide out

24. Old parent company of NBC

25. "Call of Duty: Black ___"

28. Ride for hire

31. 1990s puzzle game on an island

33. Totally lit

35. Tire swing support

37. Votes overseas

39. Hard drink

40. Classic musical comedy involving a lifeboat?

43. Officially part of a fictional universe

44. Nats or Nets, e.g.

45. Film rating gp.

46. Singers Baker and Pointer

48. Wild guess

50. Longtime network for

"Arthur"

51. A Bobbsey twin

52. Sox, on scoreboards

54. "ER" actor La Salle

56. Botanical transplant, but completely on the level?

61. Numbers to be crunched

63. Roman Senate garb

64. Biff the performance

66. Physicist's bit

67. "His Dark Material" comedian Jimmy

68. Apennines locale

69. Clothing department

70. Flower holder?

71. Peerage group DOWN

1. Scottish cap

2. Pre-owned

3. Animal abode

4. Optimal

5. French fragrance

6. Exercise wear

7. Barnacles' place

8. "Doe, ___ ..."

9. Company with a star logo

10. Die shape

11. Galaxy download, maybe

12. "Hairspray" actress Zadora

13. Pig's enclosure

21. Check the fit of

22. "Twin Peaks" actor Jack

26. Assembly-ready

27. Some mattresses

©2023 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) For answers to this puzzle, call: 1-900-226-2800, 99 cents per minute. Must be 18+. Or to bill to your credit card, call: 1-800-655-6548. Reference puzzle #JNZ990.

28. Diagnostic image, for short

29. Grande not on the menu at Starbucks?

30. Late Linkin Park singer Chester

32. Utensil points

34. Not negotiable

36. Four-award feat, for short

38. Jake's company

41. Carrie Ann of "Dancing With the Stars"

42. "Crying in ___" (2021 Michelle Zauner memoir)

47. Cells' features?

49. One under, in golf

53. Brown ermine

55. Assigned amount

57. 2000 Super Bowl winners

58. Villain in some fairy tales

59. Alpine transport

60. Corridor

61. Beaver construction

62. Took a meal

65. Functional lead-in

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Historical records tell us that Chinese Emperor Hungwu (1328–1398) periodically dealt with overwhelming amounts of decision-making. During one ten-day phase of his reign, for example, he was called on to approve 1,660 documents concerning 3,391 separate issues. Based on my interpretation of the planetary omens, I suspect you may soon be called on to deal with a similar outpouring. This might tempt you toward over-stressed reactions like irritation and self-medication. But I hope you’ll strive to handle it all with dignity and grace. In fact, that’s what I predict you will do. In my estimation, you will be able to summon the extra poise and patience to manage the intensity.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Is it even possible for us humans to live without fear—if even for short grace periods? Could you or I or anyone else somehow manage to celebrate, say, 72 hours of freedom from all worries and anxieties and trepidations? I suspect the answer is no. We may aspire to declare our independence from dread, but 200,000 years of evolution ensures that our brains are hard-wired to be ever-alert for danger. Having provided that perspective, however, I will speculate that if anyone could approach a state of utter dauntlessness, it will be you Leos in the next three weeks. This may be as close as you will ever come to an extended phase of bold, plucky audacity.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): "Dear Sunny Bright Cheery Upbeat Astrologer: You give us too many sunny, bright, cheery, upbeat predictions. They lift my mood when I first read them, but later I'm like, "What the hell?" Because yeah, they come true, but they usually cause some complications I didn't foresee. Maybe you should try offering predictions that bum me out, since then I won't have to deal with making such big adjustments. —Virgo Who is Weary of Rosy Hopeful Chirpy Horoscopes." Dear Virgo: You have alluded to a key truth about reality: Good changes often require as much modification and adaptation as challenging changes. Another truth: One of my specialties is helping my readers manage those good changes. And by the way: I predict the next

two weeks will deliver a wealth of interesting and buoyant changes.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Poet Pablo Neruda wrote, "Let us look for secret things somewhere in the world on the blue shores of silence." That might serve as a good motto for you in the coming weeks. By my astrological reckoning, you'll be wise to go in quest for what's secret, concealed, and buried. You will generate fortuitous karma by smoking out hidden agendas and investigating the rest of the story beneath the apparent story. Be politely pushy, Libra. Charmingly but aggressively find the missing information and the shrouded rationales. Dig as deep as you need to go to explore the truth's roots.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): We've all done things that make perfect sense to us, though they might look nonsensical or inexplicable to an outside observer. Keep this fact in your awareness during the next two weeks, Scorpio. Just as you wouldn't want to be judged by uninformed people who don’t know the context of your actions, you should extend this same courtesy to others, especially now. At least some of what may appear nonsensical or inexplicable will be serving a valuable purpose. Be slow to judge. Be inclined to offer the benefit of the doubt.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): I completely understand if you feel some outrage about the lack of passion and excellence you see in the world around you. You have a right to be impatient with the laziness and carelessness of others. But I hope you will find ways to express your disapproval constructively. The best approach will be to keep criticism to a minimum and instead focus on generating improvements. For the sake of your mental health, I suggest you transmute your anger into creativity. You now have an enhanced power to reshape the environments and situations you are part of so they work better for everyone.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): In the 17th century, renowned Capricorn church leader James Ussher announced he had discovered when the world had been created. It was at 6 pm on October 22 in the year 4004 BCE. From this spectacularly wrong extrapolation, we might conclude that not all Capricorns are paragons of logic and sound analysis 100 percent of the time. I say we regard this as a liberating thought for you in the coming weeks. According to my analysis, it will be a favorable time to indulge in wild dreams, outlandish fantasies, and imaginative speculations. Have fun, dear Capricorn, as you wander out in the places that singer Tom Petty referred to as "The Great Wide Open."

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): We often evaluate prospects quantitatively: how big a portion do we get, how much does something cost, how many social media friends can we add? Quantity does matter in some cases, but on other occasions may be trumped by quality. A few close, trustworthy friends may matter more than hundreds of Instagram friends we barely know. A potential house may be spacious and affordable, but be in a location we wouldn’t enjoy living in. Your project in the coming weeks, Aquarius, is to examine areas of your life that you evaluate quantitatively and determine whether there are qualitative aspects neglected in your calculations.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): "Dear Dr. Astrology: Help! I want to know which way to go. Should I do the good thing or the right thing? Should I be kind and sympathetic at the risk of ignoring my selfish needs? Or should I be a pushy stickler for what's fair and true, even if I look like a preachy grouch? Why is it so arduous to have integrity? —Pinched Pisces." Dear Pisces: Can you figure out how to be half-good and half-right? Half-selfinterested and half-generous? I suspect that will generate the most gracious, constructive results.

Homework: If you could change into an animal for a day, what would you be? Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com

a Larger Scale"--using up the full ruler.